Conditions of Female Entrepreneur start-up’s in India

Women in Business’ are a recent phenomenon in India, commencing from 1970s onward. Only 5% of the businesses are owned and operated by women in India though they constitute almost half of its population. This is indicative of gender inequality prevalent in India. According to United Nations Human Development Report out of 186 countries, India ranks 132nd in gender inequality index. The present state of Indian women is an index of social, cultural as well as economic distortions that have seeped in the Indian culture over the centuries — demeaning the status enjoyed by women in ancient India. Women have enjoyed very high status in ancient Indian culture, enjoying the status and rights equivalent to or sometimes even superior to her male counterpart. Manu, the great Indian law-giver, proclaimed ‘where women are honored, gods reside there’. In ancient India no religious ceremony by a married man was considered complete without the participation of his wife — a proof of a honorable place granted to women during that period. Despite their success in various fields and despite the appreciation they have received from various quarters, Indian women’s entry and sustenance in the field of entrepreneurship has faced many hurdles and challenges till now. A plethora of problems have prevented women entrepreneurs from running competitive businesses. Some of these issues are as follows:

· Factors like traditional gender roles, faulty socialization, discriminatory treatment from the society, lack of social encouragement, lack of self confidence among women entrepreneurs, their role conflict and cultural values etc.

· The legal framework may provide for equality of opportunities for male and female entrepreneurs but the implementation of these laws is quite cumbersome, e.g. the procedure for obtaining permission for starting a business and registering the business in one’s name etc. requires lot of formalities.

· Women entrepreneurs usually have inadequate levels of financial assets and start-up capital as compared to men. This fact necessitates their approach to financial agencies for securing additional resources

· Women entrepreneurs often do not have the necessary technical and managerial skills which are required to start and run a business. This might increase their dependence on intermediaries and office staff, especially for marketing and sales. In this process, a major chunk of profit could be cornered by the intermediaries and/or support staff.

· Technology for women entrepreneurs is often implicitly equated with simple technologies. These may contribute to the rudimentary income generation activities but not very much to the improvement and growth of manufacturing businesses of the women.

· Women entrepreneurs in less developed areas face various problems during the process of marketing their products. Some of these problems are: lack of transport facilities, poor locations of business units and tough competition from larger and established units.

How To Vitalize Women Entrepreneurship In India?

· Policies considering women as a specific target group for various development programs have to be put in place to keep an unwavering focus on enhancement of women entrepreneurship.

· Government of India has launched The National Mission for Empowerment of Women in order “to strengthen the processes that promote the all round development of women.” The government has also set up The National Resource Centre which coordinates and converges all schemes and programs targeting women. Some of its focus areas are vocational training, skill development, entrepreneurship, micro- credit and self- help groups.

· Other tools and agencies that can play an important role in the creation of more enabling policy and legal environment for women entrepreneurs are ministerial departments in charge of enhancement of the status of women, ministries responsible for the development of small and medium — sized enterprises, NGOs, women’s organizations, professional associations etc. To foster female entrepreneurship, policy makers need to adopt an integrated approach; an approach that will be able to address the impediments caused by gender asymmetries and institutionalized social structures.

· Promotion of women entrepreneurship can be done by promoting entrepreneurship culture among future women entrepreneurs. This will give them confidence, enable them to exercise their skills, prepare them to take risk and face uncertain business environment.

· Networking of the women entrepreneurs among themselves and with national, regional and international business associations should be facilitated. This will allow small and medium — sized enterprises to achieve new collective and competitive advantages beyond the reach of small firms.