CEO / President Project Mission LLC, USA
Received: 04 March, 2024; Accepted: 22 May, 2024; Published: 24 May, 2024
Citation: Vanitha, Mani. “Analysis of Women Entrepreneurship.” J Glob Entrep Manage (2024): 111. DOI: 10.59462/JGEM.2.2.111
Copyright: © 2024 Vanitha Mani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
• Women entrepreneurs • Empirical research • Economic and societal systems
Women entrepreneurship in India
“A woman entrepreneur is defined as an entity owned and controlled by a woman with a minimum financial stake of 51 percent of the capital and providing at least 51 percent of the employment produced in the entity to women,” according to the definition [1].
In India, 20.37% of MSME owners are women, making up 23.3% of the labor force. They are regarded as the foundation of the economy. By expanding women’s involvement in the labor force, India has the potential to boost the global GDP by 700 billion US dollars, claims McKinsey Global [2]. Women make up a greater proportion of the workforce in manufacturing and agriculture than males do. These industries are frequently credited with raising household income and assisting families in escaping poverty. Additionally, women’s literacy rates increased by 8.8% in FY21, highlighting the nation’s promising future. [3] At present the measures for women’s economic empowerment are inadequate to eradicate all obstacles for female entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs may be defined as a woman or a group of women who initiate, organize and run a business concern.
Definition
• Schumpeter: “Women entrepreneurs are those women who innovate, initiate or adopt a business activity”.
• Government of India: “A woman entrepreneur is defined as an enterprise owned and controlled by a woman having a minimum financial interest of 51 percent of the capital and giving at least 51 percent of the employment generated in the enterprise to women.” [4]
• Frederick Harbison: “Any woman or group of women which innovates, initiates or adopts an economic activity may be called women entrepreneurship”.
• In short, women entrepreneurs are those women who think of a business enterprise, initiate it, organize and combine factors of production, operate the enterprise and undertake risks and handle economic uncertainty involved in running it [5].
• According to the Government of India, “A Woman enterprise is the one owned and controlled by a woman having minimum financial interest of 51% of the capital and giving at least minimum 51% of generated employment to women”.
• According to J. Schumpeter, “Women who innovate, initiate or adopt business actively are called women entrepreneurs.”
The increase in female entrepreneurs has led to phenomenal business and economic growth in the nation. Women-owned businesses are significantly contributing to society through generating jobs across the country and not only that but it is also inspiring the next generation of female founders [6,7]. Women’s entrepreneurship in India is being supported by ‘Startup India’ through initiatives, programmers. The creation of supportive networks proves to be highly important. Women must actively participate in entrepreneurship, and it’s critical that they strengthen their relationships with key players in the start-up ecosystem. For the country’s sustainable development and balanced growth, women entrepreneurs must grow sustainably [8].
Due to increased opportunity brought on by economic development, improved access to higher- quality education, urbanization, the expansion of free trade, and cultural variety, female entrepreneurship in India has been very relevant. Many government programmers and campaigns have been created in India to assist the growth of female entrepreneurs. Women are the ones who have the capability to create and expand women’s entrepreneurship and can play a dominant role.
Objective
• To study the role of women the transformation of India.
• To analyze the challenges faced by the women entrepreneur and different ways to promote women’s entrepreneurship [9].
• This research was primarily descriptive research that emphasizes on explaining the importance of women entrepreneurs and its related challenges and opportunities. Information regarding this concept has been collected from the website, online articles, and ideas from the abstract journal. Based on the conceptual study the paper discusses the various interpretations. Based on the analysis discussion the conclusions were drawn [10].
Role of women entrepreneurship in the sustainable development
• Women’s empowerment is a key factor for achieving sustainable economic growth, social development and environmental sustainability [11].
• The major findings are:
• Women business owners may encourage those practices in their operations while making the entry of women easy. The other women might take advantage of those assets and employ it for their commercial purposes.
• If they receive the right education, training, and teachings from successful entrepreneurs, their involvement in sustainable development will increase.
• The major challenges for women entrepreneurs include a lack of motivation and funding.
• If they produce the goods in accordance with what the market wants. They will get good returns,
• Women from rural areas can take the initiative and participate actively.
• India’s economy is changing as a result of the digital revolution, which is creating many new opportunities for corporate growth on a global scale [12].
Importance of rural women entrepreneur
In commerce, trade, and industry today, women entrepreneurs are more essential. Nowadays the pattern of business has become quite new. Women have previously demonstrated their critical role in fields like politics, administration, engineering, health, technology, social service, and education. This is true in developed nations, and in recent years, they have started working in many new areas. In India, women participation into business is a comparatively new phenomenon [13].
The role or importance of women entrepreneurs may be ascertained from the study of the functions they perform.
These functions are as under:
• Examining the potential for founding new businesses.
• Taking chances and navigating economic uncertainty.
• Making inventions available.
• Coordinating control and administration.
• Regular oversight
Women are expanding their business ventures and breaking into previously untapped fields [14]. The increased number of employment alternatives now open to women has been the main cause of their increasing participation. Economic freedom and the business world have started to finally become more accessible. By utilizing all of their abilities, training, and competence, women are today accomplishing new heights of success. Women are expanding their business ventures and entering into new fields. They are moving from conventional to non-conventional regions. Women entrepreneurs contribute to economic growth, but they also need to empower herself and attain new levels of success by utilizing their knowledge, abilities, and training. Women are expanding their business ventures and trying new areas of operation. The women are now planning forward and linking industry to skills. There have been a lot of witnesses where leaders from various walks have faced many problems, and played a vital role in the field of women entrepreneurs in India.
Government SCHEME supporting the women entrepreneur
The following are the major government supportive schemes which proved to be very helpful for the women entrepreneur [15].
• Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana
• Udyogini Scheme
• Cent Kalyani Scheme
• NGOs Credit Schemes
• Micro Credit Schemes
• Trade Related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD) Scheme for women - Provided by the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises.
• Mahila Samiti Yojna
• National Banks for Agriculture and Rural Development Schemes
• SBI s Stree Shakti Scheme
• Women’s Development Corporations (WDCs)
• Marketing of Non-Farm Products of Rural Women (MAHIMA)
• Assistance to Rural Women in Non-Farm Development (ARWIND) schemes
Women are the backbone of society, and when they are empowered, everyone benefits. Through its various programmes, the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) is empowering female entrepreneurs by assisting them in igniting their creativity and creating their own identities. Under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) Scheme, women entrepreneurs have launched 1.38 lakh projects as of 23.01.2019. Approximately 30% of all PMEGP projects were started by women entrepreneurs. Women business owners are covered under the program’s Special Category and are eligible for 25% and 35% in subsidies, respectively, for projects put up in urban and rural regions. Only 5% of the project cost goes toward the beneficiaries’ personal contributions who are women during 2016- 17 and 2017-18, under the Khadi Programme of KVIC, women entrepreneurs have set up 30437 projects for which margin money of 85,305 lakh Rupees have been disbursed. Not only MSME, the Government of India has taken various steps towards women empowerment and safety. Initiatives like BetiBachao, BetiPadhao, Stand Up India, Mission Indradhanush, Mudra Yojana Scheme, TREAD (Trade Related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development) Scheme, MahilaUdyamNidhi Scheme, Annapurna Scheme, Stree Shakti Package for Women Entrepreneurs, BhartiyaMahila Business Bank Loan, Dena Shakti Scheme, Udyogini Scheme, Cent Kalyani Scheme and many more have added to the welfare of the women population in India [16].
Strategies to boost women entrepreneurship
• Providing business skills training is a basic step in empowering women entrepreneurs, but training courses must address deeper psychological and socioeconomic barriers women face in order to actually accomplish transformation change.
• While obtaining financial access, it is a crucial first step in empowering women economically, it is insufficient to support the growth of female subsistence businesses
• Programs
• They must be supported with access to resources like credit, technology and markets. Those women who are interested to start their business must be supported through the basic ideas of starting the business.
• Supporting women’s entrepreneurship in the nation by giving them access to funding and coaching, the women may come into active role.
• The women who lack access to the latest technologies must be trained accordingly.
• The entrepreneurial development and management programmes need to be rigorous, offer enough hands-on training, and be overseen by successful entrepreneurs who are now in business for themselves. Any endeavor to enhance capacity should include technical aspects of finance and accounting, technology and processes, as well as leadership and negotiating abilities [17].
• Handholding support services (legal formation, licensing, clearances, scaling up, marketing strategies, and market and credit linkages) are another crucial component for fostering successful start-ups. This will raise the success rate of start-up businesses run by women. Dissemination of information on womenspecific programmes is essential for raising awareness among prospective female entrepreneurs.
More effort is required in the following areas to support progress
• Deeper understanding of how women’s entrepreneurship contributes to technology has an important role and economic expansion.
• Gain a deeper comprehension of how women’s entrepreneurship impacts various economic circumstances. When we speak to contexts, we refer to both the economic and societal levels of development as they relate to women’s roles in society. For instance, we are aware that women’s entrepreneurship in transitional and developing nations varies markedly from that of women in developed nations. For instance, economies have gone and continue to go through changes to adapt to a market economy.
• The position of women in society has also been greatly affected by these changes, frequently in negative ways. In many economies, women and men were supposedly considered equal in each and every element of society in these countries. The larger the difference between men and women in a society, the greater the discrepancy between men and women business owners, and the higher the discrepancy exist between their individual contributions to socioeconomic development.
• However, structural disparities between men and women must be removed, and it became hard to rediscover and understand how the market economy functioned. This has put a lot of women, most of whom have advanced degrees, in difficult situations. Women entrepreneurs have particular challenges in underdeveloped nations because of the combination of poverty, a lack of formal education, and the very low social status of women. In industrialized economies, women have equal opportunities for employment and education as men, but there are still major gaps that appear to be narrowing extremely slowly.
When thinking about our economy and growth policies, it’s critical to keep in mind the needs of women business owners in terms of financing. In fact, the use of business development and support services, access to corporate, governmental, and international markets, access to and use of technology, R&D and innovation, etc will surely add more scope and opportunity for the women entrepreneur. Additionally, this involves regularly assessing how these initiatives are impacting the performance of women-owned businesses and exchanging best practices and ideas with other prominent international organizations. It is also important to expand market connections and mentoring for women-owned businesses through networks like women entrepreneur groups. Sharing tools and compiling and disseminating success stories of entrepreneurs is a beneficial practice as well.Facilitate ease of doing business to streamline the external entrepreneurial environment. Bringing in smarter technology, single-window clearances and better interdepartmental coordination will enable simpler, faster, transparent and effective service delivery for women start-ups.