Chapter – 5

Women and Entrepreneurship

Background:

One of the reasons for our slow economic growth is the relative absence of women in the mainstream of economic activities. There are not many women in the corporate world, especially in the old economy enterprises. It must be conceded, however, that their number in the corporate world is increasing and will significantly increase in the next two decades. But, the corporate world will continue to have dominance of men. Similarly, professions like Bureaucracy and Armed Forces will continue to be dominated by men. Politics is highly tainted. And women may be rather reluctant to join it. This leaves us with two professions: Educational Sector and Business Entrepreneurship. Women will not find the current situation in schools, where more students are outside the class than inside it very stimulating. Therefore, business entrepreneurship seems to be the profession of the women in the years to come.

Entrepreneurship – A Favorable Career for Women

Firstly, it provides flexibility very greatly needed by women. They lose their well-deserved promotions in the corporate sector just because they had to go on maternity leave. In entrepreneurship they can decide their own working time, their own promotion and their own success.

Secondly, it is a profession with high elasticity. It can never get overcrowded in a large country like ours. Moreover, there is no quota and no reservation for entry into this profession.

Thirdly, women are excellent in managing finances, which is vital for the success of an entrepreneur. Several women have already demonstrated this by their success.

Fourthly, this is the only profession in which they could easily beat men. They are trained to be good entrepreneurs and good managers from childhood itself.

Women Entrepreneurship- A Model

This is one profession in which women could establish partnership with men in their lives. This is amply demonstrated by what is called the Philippines Model.

In this model, they are able to develop “entrepreneur couples”. Several of this type of “entrepreneur couples” could be found in the Philippines. The usual practice was that two classmates would get married in the final year of their college. One of them, usually the husband, will take up a job either in a company or with the Government, the wife starting a small stores. The income of the husband was utilized for managing the household and educating children. The income from the stores was reinvested to expand the business.

When the store became a big departmental stores, the husband would usually resign his job and join the stores as President of the company, the wife becoming treasurer. There were many such cases in Philippines. It is time that similar practice should be encouraged by taking a large number of women in our colleges and management institutes and giving them entrepreneurial training and a lot of socialization. This way it can be hoped that they get married with classmates and produce the Indian variety of “entrepreneur couples”.

While this model from the Philippines can be of great help in developing women as entrepreneurs, the Malaysian society provides another important lesson for us. Mr. Washington Sycip, Chairman of the SGV Group, a pioneering Asian auditing and consulting firm has identified the reasons for success of Malaysian women.

In the Malay family, girls have responsibilities thrust upon them at an early age while boys are given much more freedom on the grounds that they “are young only once”. Probably as a result of this, we are seeing women excel in all the universities. In their roles in business, government and the professions, they are considerably ahead of their sisters in the Northern Asia. It will be advisable for us to thrust entrepreneurial responsibilities on girls from an early age.

For India to become an economic superpower, all the energies and talent of our women have to be given an opportunity to blossom. Business entrepreneurship seems to be the most effective outlet for channeling the energy of Indian women. They should be encouraged to start their own business. They should become wealth creators either singly or jointly with their husbands.

Women Entrepreneurship

Women have some inherent qualities that make them successful entrepreneurs. This is due to the following reasons:

Endurance among Women: All over Asia women work more and harder than the men folks. A United Nation study on Asian women supports the view that women on the farmland work more than men and animal put together. This is because women not only work on farms, they also do house-hold work like fetching water, fodder for cattle, fuel for cooking i.e. wood etc. and looking after the children. Thus, women look after the household work, the animal, children, husband in addition to farm, this distinctly make women more hard working then men and animal on the farm put together.

Responsibility: A girl child is burdened with the responsibility much before her

brothers. In rural and to an extent in urban India, a girl starts to help her over burdened mother in bringing up children i.e. her own sibling and other house hold work as soon as she is capable of the same. They also get married at a younger age. This enhances a sense of responsibility among the women at an early age.

Managerial Acumen: Women have inborn managerial acumen. This due to their single handedly managing various kind activities. Managing one household itself is a juggling of a number of activities and people, that women easily do, without even realizing the complexity involved in the same. This develops their people and managerial skills.

Financial Skills: Although, men are the earners most of the time, it is the women that

have the financial power. Any marketing or advertising person would vouch for it. This is the reason most of the companies target their advertisement towards the women. Because of the responsibility of running, the household women learn instinctively how to make judicious usage of limited resources. this makes them become a good financial manager.

Communication Skill: It is proven by research, that women have better

communication skills than men. In their day-to-day communication, they have to interact with men and women in various age groups, such as children, old parents, in-laws etc. As we are aware that a manger needs to have excellent communication skills. This makes women endowed with one of the important managerial competencies.

Weakness of Women Entrepreneurs: Women lack certain skills that limit their abilities as an Entrepreneur, these are as follows:

Lack of Assertiveness: Women lack assertiveness that hinders their ability to sell a new idea. That might result in their getting disheartened and giving up the idea altogether. This because of the child rearing habits in Asian countries, where it is said, “women are generally to be seen and not heard”. Therefore, women are brought up to be submissive.

Limited understanding of legal Issues: Women have limited understanding of the legal issues due to the non- exposure to the same. It is partially due to the lack of interest as well. Women are so preoccupied in their household activities and responsibilities that they leave these issues on others and take it up only when they are required to do so. Hence, their grasp of legal issue is limited.

Emotional in business decision: Women are emotional by nature. Therefore, their business decisions get flavored by the same. Hence, the objectivity that is required in business decisions would be missing. This might result in business failure or unnecessary complications.

Lack of exposure: In Asian sub continent and Muslim society women get a limited exposure to outside world. Therefore, this hampers their ability to run business and deal with various agencies that need to be dealt with in the course of business.

Women in Business- an Indian Experience:

There have been a number of success stories of women entrepreneurs. Most of them are conventional industries such garment-fashion industry, Jewellry and household products. However, there has been an absence of women in other non-conventional industries like machine design and machine winding etc.

Women in the urban India are taking entrepreneurship as an option. There has been limited progress in this respect as far as rural Indian women are concerned. We know that there is more scope for women entrepreneurship in rural India.

Government’s Efforts to Encourage Women Entrepreneurship:

Government has taken up some steps to promote women entrepreneurship

There are some women specific Entrepreneurship development programs that District Industries Centres run. Keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of women the entrepreneurial inputs are designed. For example, there are more imputes on marketing management as compare to General Management.

Indian Government along with UNICEF is providing substantial financial help for training rural women to take up entrepreneurship individually and in groups. Since in rural India it is easier for women to take up group entrepreneurship than take up a project individually. However, there is still a lot of scope for women entrepreneurship in rural India.

Women Prefer Conventional Business: The industries where women show more interest are as follows:

Beauty parlor Pickle making Fashion Designing Jewellry Designing Tailoring etc.

Unexplored Business:However, we have also found a few women in the male dominated industries as well. These are;

Diamond cutting Chemical Industry Machine designing Trading

However, the instances of women joining the unconventional industries are very limited. Therefore, a woman going in for non-conventional business needs to be given recognition more than the other entrepreneurs.

There is a Man behind every Successful Woman:

The researches have proved that most of the women have taken entrepreneurship as career after marriage. There could be a number of reasons for this, a few are mentioned below:

The parents of most of girls believe that their responsibility is to get their daughters married. Therefore, they do not encourage them to start a business.

Financial needs after the marriage make women to take up entrepreneurship. Husbands of such women also encourage them, as this becomes an additional source of income for the family. This partially takes away financial burden off from the husband. In some cases, where the business grows big even husbands join their wives in running the business.

Alternative to job; some women who have time and some talent take up entrepreneurship to utilize them.

Women forced out of mainstream job due to the household responsibility and at the same time requiring additional income take up entrepreneurship as a career option.

Independence; Women seeking financial independence also opt for entrepreneurship as a career.

Women as leader:

An entrepreneur, in true sense, is a leader. How are women different than men in their leadership style of functioning? Women use more participative or democratic style and less autocratic and directive style than men do. Both men and women emphasize task accomplishments more when leader of their own gender numerically dominated the setting.

It is important to mention here that because of non-exposure to the liaison with various agencies in the earlier part of their life, women find it difficult to deal with labor and other statutory agencies.

Rural Women:

Though the need and scope for entrepreneurship among rural women is more, still the conventional setting of rural India has curbed its development. However, with introduction of seat reservation for women in Panchayti Raj it would change the scenario.

Conclusion:

It is could be concluded that women have some inherent qualities that make them the better entrepreneurs than their male counterparts. Still we do not see many women entrepreneurs in India. The reason is that there are many impediments in the way of women entrepreneurs.

Apart from the external environment women need to deal with a number of factors that associated with conventional up bring of women in Asia. As it is said, “ When a woman becomes entrepreneur, the entire family becomes entrepreneurs” this is not so in case of a man becoming an entrepreneur. Therefore, women entrepreneurs’ development would have a positive effect on economic development of the nation.

There is need for strong dosage of “Gender Sensitization” among the people in rural India, as there still exists the social evil like female infanticides, Child-marriage and dowry. These practices in the society adversely impact the growth of women entrepreneurship directly affecting the economic growth of the nation.