Fempreneurs!!

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”- Anais Nin

Before going into the main arena which will discuss on what are some of the challenges a female entrepreneur faces, let’s dive into the concept of “Entrepreneur” and “female entrepreneurs”. Now let us first understand “Who is an Entrepreneur?” I went through various definitions and meanings which describes an entrepreneur but the one which caught my sight is- “Entrepreneurs are individuals who recognize opportunities where others see chaos or confusion.” This is one of those definitions which describes a real entrepreneur.

Now when we have known the real meaning of an Entrepreneur, let’s understand who are female entrepreneurs? Also known as “mumpreneurs” or “lipstickpreneurs” or “fempreneurs”, they either individually or in a group are a set of women who innovate or adopt a business, organize and run a business enterprise.

As it can be noticed that the above definition describes a “female entrepreneur” but why do stereotypes like “mumpreneurs, lipstickpreneurs, fempreneurs” linked with a woman entrepreneur?

Has anyone ever heard of words like “dadpreneurs” or “manpreneurs”? — No. Then why only a women have to face phrases or words like these. The existence and use of such feminized phrases and words gives more weightage to the perception that entrepreneurship is largely a male-oriented sector. I believe that each of us has the right to call ourselves whatever we feel and want to.

There are some more challenges which a women entrepreneur has to face apart from the above discussed stereotypes. I would like to highlight some major ones, number one being the “financial problem”- Leaving out a few almost every women entrepreneur comes across this problem. The banks won’t motivate them thinking they are less worthy and very less of them have an individual property of their own. Therefore, women entrepreneurs usually fail at the very first step.

Second challenge which they face is the “stiff competition” prevailing in the market. Due to less finance, they suffer from scarcity of raw materials. As a result some women enterprises dilute because of the tough competition from the other organized sectors as well as from the male-oriented sector.

Third challenge which a women entrepreneur has to face comes from her own family. The very sole reason why a women entrepreneur is denoted as “mumpreneur” is because of her emotional ties with her family and children. She has to face all the criticism of her loved ones and also bear the burden or pressure of handling both family and business at the same time. This is a major challenge for a woman entrepreneur and many women enterprises dilute or doesn’t even start cause of this.

There are many other challenges which a women entrepreneur has to go through but I believe the ones I’d listed are the root ones. Apart from this, the titles which they have been embedded with will not matter if they are focused and determined. What matters is the willingness or urge to keep moving forward. :)

“If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.”-Marissa Mayer (CEO, Yahoo! Inc.)