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WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA

B. Suba1 & M. Sneka2

1,2
MBA, Anna University, Madurai

Abstract
In former days, for Women there were 3 Ks- Kitchen, Kids, Knitting, then came 3 Ps-Powder,
Pappad, Pickles and now at present there are 4 Es- Electricity, Electronics, Energy, Engineering
.Indian women had undergone a long way and are becoming increasingly visible and successful in all
spheres and have shifted from kitchen to higher level of professional activities. Today‘s women are
taking more and more professional and technical degrees to cope up with market need and are
flourishing as de signers, interior decorators, exporters, publishers, garment manufacturers and still
exploring new avenues of economic participation. It is perhaps for these reasons that Government
Bodies, NGO‘s, Social Scientists, Researchers and International Agencies have started showing
interest in the issues related to entrepreneurship among women in India.

Introduction
In the era of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization along with ongoing
IT revolution, today‘s world is changing at a surprising pace. Political and Economic
Transformations appear to be taking place everywhere—as countries convert from command
to demand economies, dictatorships move toward democratic system, and Monarchies build
new civil institutions. These changes have created economic opportunities for women who
want to own and operate businesses. Today, women entrepreneurs represent a group of
women who have broken away from the beaten track and are exploring new avenues of
economic participation. Among the reasons for women to run organized enterprises are
their skill and knowledge, their talents, abilities and creativity in business and a compelling
desire of wanting to do something positive. It is high time that countries should rise to the
challenge and create more support systems for encouraging more entrepreneurship amongst
women. At the same time, it is up to women to break away from stereotyped mindsets.
In this dynamic world, women entrepreneurs are a significant part of the global expedition
for sustained economic development and social progress. Due to the growing
industrialization, urbanization, social legislation and along with the spread of higher
education and awareness, the emergence of Women owned businesses are highly increasing
in the economies of almost all countries.
Women entrepreneur‘s explore the prospects of starting a new enterprise; under
take risks, introduction of new innovations, coordinate administration & control of business
&providing effective leadership in all aspects of business and have proved their footage in
the male dominated business area.

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This report focuses on the concept of woman entrepreneurs in India; their traits in
business, the problems faced by them when they set up and make some suggestions for
future prospects for development of Women Entrepreneurs.

History
Entrepreneurship has gained currency across the sphere and female-
entrepreneurship has become an important module. India is one of the fastest emerging
economies and the importance of entrepreneurship is realized across the gamut. “Women
Entrepreneurship” means an act of business ownership and business creation that empowers
women economically increases their economic strength as well as position in society.
Women-entrepreneurs have been making a considerable impact in all most all the segments
of the economy.
“Women Entrepreneur” is a person who denies the role of their personal needs to
participate and be accepted economically independent. Strong desire to do something
positive is a high-quality women entrepreneur who contributes to the position values of
family and social life.
“An enterprise owned and controlled by a women having a minimum financial
interest of 51% of capital and giving at least 51% of the employment generated by the
enterprise to women.” - Government of India.
According to Kamala Singh, “A women entrepreneur is a confident, innovative and
creative woman capable of achieving economic independence individually or in
collaboration generates employment opportunities for others through initiating establishing
and running an enterprise by keeping pace with her personal, family and social life.”
According to Medha Dubhanshi Vinze, “A women entrepreneur is a person who is an
enterprising individual with an eye for opportunities and an uncanny vision, Commercial
acumen, with tremendous perseverance and above all a person who is willing to take risk
with the unknown because of the adventures spirit she possesses.”
In the words of Former President APJ Abdul Kalam "Empowering women is a
prerequisite for creating a good nation, when women are empowered, society with stability
is assured. Empowerment of women is essential as their thoughts and their value systems
lead to the development of a good family, good society and ultimately a good nation."
Pandit Jawaharlal Lal Nehru has remarked “When women move forward, the family
moves, the village moves and the Nation moves.”
Women Entrepreneurs have been making a significant impact in all segments of
economy of the world. Their willingness for the future is apparent in their growing
confidence, in their strengths and in their desire to seek different forms of work in order to
achieve a new balance between work and home. Thus a women entrepreneur is one who
starts business and manages sit independently and tactfully takes all the risks, accepts

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challenging role to meet her personal needs and become economically independent.
A strong desire to do something positive is an inbuilt quality of entrepreneurial women,
who is capable contributing values in both family and social life and is one who faces the
challenges boldly with an iron, will to succeed.

Traits of Women Entrepreneurs in India

 Women are ambitious
A successful woman entrepreneur is dreadfully strong-minded one, has an inner
urge or drives to change contemplation into realism. Knowledge from her previous
occupancy as an employee, relying on educational qualifications or lessons learnt from
inborn business, she is ready to grab opportunities, sets goal, possess clear vision, steps
confidently forward and is ambitious to be successful. Every successful woman
entrepreneur is truly determined to achieve goals and make her business prosper. Thorough
knowledge of the field is indispensable to success. She comes with new innovative solutions
to old problems to tide over issues.
 Women can balance home and work
A successful woman entrepreneur is good at balancing varied aspects of life.
Her multi tasking aptitude combined with support from spouse and relatives enables her to
bring together business priorities with domestic responsibilities competently and
efficiently.
 Women values cooperation and allegiance
A Woman has the ability to work with all levels of populace. She is keen on
maintaining associations and communicates evidently and efficiently. This helps her to
negotiate even responsive issues without difficulty. She is sympathetic to people around her
and have good networking skills that help her to get better contacts and utilize
opportunities.
 Women are cost conscious
A successful woman entrepreneur prepares pragmatic budget estimates.
She provides cost effective quality services to her clients. With minimized cost of
operations, she is able to force her team to capitalize on profits and gather its benefits. 
 Women is open and willing to learn
A successful woman entrepreneur keeps side by side of changes, as she is fully
conscious of the importance of evolving changes. She is ahead of her competitors and
thrives on changes. She adapts her business to changes in technology or service prospect of
her patrons. She is inquisitive, concerned to learn and accommodative to innovations.

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 Women are Resourceful

Women entrepreneurs take advantage effectively coordinating the available factors
and resources such as mentoring, training and coaching and build a strong base of
education, training and experience which can help lead to success.
 Women are Confident
A successful women entrepreneur is confident in her ability. She is ready to learn
from others, search for help from experts if it means adding value to her goals. She is
positive in nature and is keener to take risks. A winning woman entrepreneur uses common
intelligence to make sound judgments when encountering everyday situations. This is
gleaned from past experience and information acquired over the years. It is essential not to
get aggravated and give up when you face obstacles and trials. The aptitude to explore
uncharted territories and take bold decisions is the hallmark of a successful woman
entrepreneur. A successful woman usually loves what she does. She is extremely fervent
about her tasks and activities. Her high energy levels motivate her to contribute immensely
towards building, establishing and maintaining a prosperous business.
 Women focus on their Plans
Women Entrepreneur‘s plan their work and work with plan. Set long-term and
short-term goals and take consistent action in moving toward them.
 Women are aware of her legal responsibility to the social order
A successful woman entrepreneur is eager to share her achievement with the
society. She is dedicated to assist others and enjoys her liability.
An effectual Women Entrepreneur requires certain additional essential qualities,
which can be listed as follows:-
 Has some blend of critical analytical thinking, creativity, and practical implementation
of ideas.
 Patience and bearing the sufferings on behalf of others.
 Takes advantage of resources such as mentoring, counselling and other small business
development assistance.
 Clear vision and ambition on the improvement of family and children.
 May judge ambiguous business conditions in more positive, enthusiastic, and optimistic
terms.
 Efficient execution of decisions imposed on them.
 Single-minded and devoted to their unique passions.
 Access and alertness to latest scientific and technological information.
 Has an ability to build relationships and to connect with others on a social and
interpersonal level accepting changes in right time.
 Characterized by high levels of social competence and social intelligence

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 Preparedness to take risks.

 Have high levels of work motivation.
 Strong determination.
 Strongly influence events (or self-efficacy).
 Quick and effective choice making skill.
 Often relatively comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty and risk.
 Innovative thinking and farsightedness.
 Ability to work physically more at any age.
Many women have these traits but they never got a platform to showcase their
talents and for this reason they don’t know their real abilities. Matching the basic qualities
required for entrepreneurs and the basic characters of Indian women reveal that, much
potential is available among the Indian women on their entrepreneurial ability. This
potential is to be documented, brought out and exposed for utilization in productive and
service sectors for the progress of the nation.

Key Changes in Women Entrepreneurs in Last Five Decades

 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE FIFTIES:
Compulsive factors led to the creation of women entrepreneurs. 
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE SIXTIES:
Women began to aspire but also accepted the social cultural traditions
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE SEVENTIES:
The women in this decade opened up new frontier. They had not only aspiration but
ambition.
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE EIGHTIES:
Women were educated in highly sophisticated, technological and professional
education. They became equally contributing partners.
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE NINETIES:
This was the first time when the concept of best rather than male heir was talked
about. 
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS OF THE 21st Century:
“Jill of all trades”
Since the 21st century, the status of women in India has been changing as a result
to mounting industrialization and urbanization and social legislation. Over the years, more
and more women are going in for higher education, technical and professional education
and their proportion in the workforce has also been increased.
With the spread of education and awareness, women have shifted from the kitchen,
handicrafts and traditional cottage industries to non-traditional higher levels of activities.

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The Government has also laid special weight age on the requirement for conducting special
entrepreneurial training programs for women to enable them to start their own ventures.
Financial institutions and banks have also set up particular cells to help women
entrepreneurs. This has rebound the women entrepreneurs on the economic scene in the
recent years although many women‘s entrepreneurship enterprises are still remained a
much neglected field. Though, for women there are quite a lot of handicaps to enter into
and manage business ownership due to the intensely entrenched conventional state of mind
and strict principles of the Indian society.
Role of Women as an Entrepreneur
Considering the flow of women entrepreneurs in the traditional industries, it is
often criticized that the women entrepreneurship is engaged only in handloom and
handicraft and in then on-traditional term, now their aspect have broaden into new line
like hotel line, Xeroxing, Beauty Parlour business, incense stick making, candle making etc.
In the last decade, there has been a remarkable shift it emphasizes from the traditional
industry to non-traditional industry and services. Based on this concept, some important
opportunities are being identified, considering the socio-economic, cultural and
educational status and motivational level of women entrepreneurs, particularly projects
with low investment, low technical know-how and assured market are suggested for them
such as production of soaps, detergents, ready- made instant food products including
pickles, spices, papad, manufacturing of woollen goods, beauty parlour business, typing
centre, job contracts for packaging of goods and distribution and household provision etc.
At present they are
 Creative: It refers to the creative approach or innovative ideas with competitive
market. Well-planned approach is needed to examine the existing situation and to
identify the entrepreneurial opportunities. It further implies that women entrepreneurs
have alliance with clued-up people and constricting the right organization offering
support and service.
 Quality to working hard: Innovative women have further ability to work hard. The
creative ideas have to come to a fair play. Hard work is required to build up an
enterprise.
 Determination: Women entrepreneurs must have an intention to fulfill their dreams.
They have to make a dream transferred into an idea enterprise.
 Ability and desire to take risk: The desire refers to the willingness to take risk and
ability to the proficiency in planning making forecast estimates and calculations
 Profit earning capacity: She has a capability to get maximum return out of invested
capital.

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Functions of Women Entrepreneurs

A Woman entrepreneur has also to perform all the functions involved in establishing
an enterprise.
 Supervision and leadership.
 Raising funds
 Co-ordination, administration and control.
 Form of business
 Introduction of innovations, imitations of innovations.
 Product analysis
 project preparation
 Undertaking a risk and handling of economic uncertainties involved in business.
 Determination of objectives
 Idea generation and screening
 Functions for establishment of an enterprise
 Procuring men, machine and materials and operations of business
In nutshell, women entrepreneur are those women who think of a business
enterprise, initiate it, organize and combine the factors of production, operate the
enterprise, undertake risk and handle economic uncertainties involved in running a business
enterprise.

Successful Leading Business Women in India

The 21 Leading Business women in India
 Zia Mody, Senior Partner, AZB & Partners
 Tarjani Vakil, former Chairman and Managing Director, EXIM Bank
 Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Joint MD, Kinetic Engineering
 Simone Tata, Chairman, Trent Ltd.
 SharanApparao, Proprietor, Apparao Galleries
 ShahnazHussain, CEO, Shahnaz Herbals
 Ritu Nanda, CEO, Escolife
 Ritu Kumar ,Fashion Designer
 RenukaRamnath, CEO, ICICI Ventures
 Ravina Raj Kohli, Media personality and ex-President, STAR News
 Ranjana Kumar ,Chairman, NABARD
 RajshreePathy, Chairman, Rajshree Sugars and Chemicals Ltd
 Priya Paul, Chairman, Apeejay Park Hotels
 Preetha Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals

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 NainaLalKidwai ,Deputy CEO, HSBC

 Lalita D Gupte, Joint Managing Director, ICICI Bank
 KiranMazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon
 JyoitNaik, President, LijjatPapad EktaKapoor ,Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms
 ChandaKocchar, Executive Director, ICICI Bank
 Akhila Srinivasan, Managing Director, Shriram Investments Ltd

Women Entrepreneurs and their Problems

Women entrepreneurs face many hurdles. Societal support is a key determinant in
entrepreneurial establishment. The most common problem, which a woman faces, is the
non-cooperation from her husband or close family members. Majority of the time the family
members do not motivate them. Besides they face other problems like mobility constraints,
dual responsibility, low managing ability, risk-bearing ability etc. They don‘t lack
managerial skills but they have less promotional ability, which they need to improve upon.
Scarcity of raw material and finance are another problem faced by the women
entrepreneurs. The standard of technology used by the women entrepreneurs is
qualitatively low; they are poor in technical know-how. Transportation difficulties,
improper power supply and telecommunication are some of the other problem faced by
them. Marketing problem is the biggest problem faced by women entrepreneurs. There are
some umpteen problems faced by women at various stages beginning from their initial
commencement of enterprise, in running their enterprise. Their various problems are as
follows:
 Arrangement of Finance
For every business undertaking Finance is said to be the ―life blood, whether it is
large, medium or small enterprise. Women entrepreneurs face the problems of shortage of
finance on two important bases. Firstly, women do not in general have property on their
own names to use that as collateral securities for obtaining loans/funds from banks and
other financial institutions. Thus their access to external sources is very limited.
Secondly, obtaining the support of bankers, managing the working capital, lack of credit
resources are the problems which still remain in the male‘s domain.
 Shortage of raw-materials
Women entrepreneurs encounter the problems of shortage of raw-materials and
necessary inputs. On the pinnacle of this, is the high prices of raw materials, on one hand
and getting raw materials at minimum discount rates are the other.
 Cut-throat Competition
Lot of the women entrepreneurs have imperfect organizational set up to drive in a
lot of money for canvassing and advertisements. They have to face severe competition from

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organized industries. They have also to face a stiff competition with the men entrepreneurs
who easily involve in the promotion and development area and carry out easy marketing of
their products with both the organized sector and their male counterparts. Such a
competition ultimately results in the insolvency of women entrepreneurs
 Lack of education and prevalent levels of illiteracy amongst women
In India, around (40%) of women are still illiterate. Illiteracy is the root cause of
socio economic barriers or hurdles. Due to lack of Knowledge of latest technological
change, know-how and education creates problems before women to set up competitive
enterprises
 Family Conflicts
Women also countenance the conflict of performing of home role as they eye are
not available to spend enough time with their families. Because in India, mainly a woman‘s
duty is to look after her children and manage the other members of the family. In business
they have to spend long hours and as a result, they find it difficult to meet the demands of
their family members and society as well. Their incapability to attend to domestic work,
time for education of children, personal hobbies, and entertainment adds to their conflicts.
 Marketing Problems
Women entrepreneurs incessantly face the problems in marketing their products.
It is one of the core problems as this area is mainly dominated by males and even women
with adequate experience fail to make a dent. For marketing the products women
entrepreneurs have to be at the mercy of middlemen who pocket the hunk of profit.
Although the middlemen exploit the women entrepreneurs, the purging of middlemen is
tricky, because it involves a lot of running about. Women entrepreneurs also find it difficult
to capture the market and make their products popular.
 Lack of self-confidence and optimistic attitude amongst women
Nowadays most of the women are suffering from one major problem of lack of
self- confidence, determination, physically powerful outlook, hopefulness etc. They are
always panic from committing mistakes while doing their piece of work, more over there is
limited initiative of taking risk and bearing uncertainty in them. Thus all these
psychological factors often obstruct their path of achieving success in the area of
enterprise.
 High cost of production
High cost of production undermines the efficiency and adversely affects the
development of women entrepreneurs. The installation of new machinery during expansion
of the productive capacity and like similar factor dissuades the women entrepreneur from
venturing in to new area. Government assistance in the form of grant and subsidies to some
extent enables them to tide over the difficult situations. However, in the long run, it would
be necessary to increase efficiency and expand productive capacity and thereby reduce

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cost to make their ultimate survival possible, other than these, women entrepreneurs also
face the problems of labour, human resources, infrastructure, legal formalities, overload of
work, lack of family support, mistrust etc.

Objectives of the Research

The main purpose or objective of study of women entrepreneurship is as follows
 To Exhibit the encouraging and discouraging factors in an enterprise.
 Identification and analysis of all the short comings encountered by women in
setting and establishing an industrial enterprise.
 To provide solutions to the various problems faced by the women entrepreneur
group.

Review of Literature
Women entrepreneurship development is an essential part of human resource
development. The development of women entrepreneurship is very low in India, especially
in the rural areas. Entrepreneurship amongst women has been a recent concern.
Women have become aware of their existence their rights and their work situation.
However, women of middle class are not too eager to alter their role in fear of social
backlash.
The progress is more visible among upper class families in urban cities.
This paper focuses on women entrepreneur. Any understanding of Indian women,
of their identity, and especially of their role taking and breaking new paths, will be
incomplete without a walk down the corridors of Indian history where women have lived
and internalized various role models. The paper talks about the status of women
entrepreneurs and the problems faced by them when they ventured out to carve their own
niche in the competitive world of business environment.
In this dynamic world, women entrepreneurs are an important part of the global
quest for sustained economic development and social progress. In India, though women
have played a key role in the society, their entrepreneurial ability has not been properly
tapped due to the lower status of women in the society. It is only from the Fifth Five Year
Plan (1974-78) onwards that their role has been explicitly recognized with a marked shift in
the approach from women welfare to women development and empowerment.
The development of women entrepreneurship has become an important aspect of our plan
priorities. Several policies and programmes are being implemented for the development of
women entrepreneurship in India.
There is a need for changing the mindset towards women so as to give equal rights
as enshrined in the constitution. The progress towards gender equality is slow and is partly
due to the failure to attach money to policy commitments. In the words of president APJ

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Abdul Kalam "empowering women is a prerequisite for creating a good nation, when women
are empowered, society with stability is assured. Empowerment of women is essential as
their thoughts and their value systems lead to the development of a good family, good
society and ultimately a good nation."
When a woman is empowered it does not mean that another individual becomes
powerless or is having less power. On the contrary, if a women is empowered her
competencies towards decision- making will surely influence her family’s behavior.
In advanced countries, there is a phenomenon of increase in the number of
self-employed women after the world war 11. In USA, women own 25% of all business, even
though their sales on an average are less than two-fifths of those of other small business.
In Canada, women own one-third of small business and in France it is one-fifth.

Women Entrepreneurship in India

No. of Units No. of Women
States Percentage
Registered Entrepreneurs
Tamil Nadu 9618 2930 30.36
Uttar Pradesh 7980 3180 39.84
Kerala 5487 2135 38.91
Punjab 4791 1618 33.77
Maharashtra 4339 1394 32.12
Gujarat 3872 1538 39.72
Karnataka 3882 1026 26.84
Madhya Pradesh 2967 842 28.38
Other States & UTS 14576 4185 28.71
Total 57,452 18,848 32.82

Women Work Participation

Country Percentage
India (1980-1981) 14.2
India (1990-1991) 19.7
India (2000-2001) 22.3
India (2010-2011) 31.6
USA 45
UK 43
Indonesia 40
Sri lanka 35
Brazil 35

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Research Methodology
For methodology an extensive literature review of secondary data from various
sources has been held as related to the stated objectives of the study as well as research
study on internet survey basis.

Limitations
During doing this research I found out that Woman entrepreneurs face following
limitations
1. The greatest deterrent to women entrepreneurs is that they are women. A kind of
patriarchal – male dominant social order is the building block to them in their way
towards business success. Male members think it a big risk financing the ventures run by
women.
2. The financial institutions are skeptical about the entrepreneurial abilities of women.
The bankers consider women loonies as higher risk than men loonies. The bankers put
unrealistic and unreasonable securities to get loan to women entrepreneurs. According
to a report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, "despite
evidence that women’s loan repayment rates are higher than men’s, women still face
more difficulties in obtaining credit," often due to discriminatory attitudes of banks and
informal lending groups.
3. Entrepreneurs usually require financial assistance of some kind to launch their ventures
-be it a formal bank loan or money from a savings account. Women in developing
nations have little access to funds, due to the fact that they are concentrated in poor
rural communities with few opportunities to borrow money. The women entrepreneurs
are suffering from inadequate financial resources and working capital. The women
entrepreneurs lack access to external funds due to their inability to provide tangible
security. Very few women have the tangible property in hand.
4. Women’s family obligations also bar them from becoming successful entrepreneurs in
both developed and developing nations. "Having primary responsibility for children,
home and older dependent family members, few women can devote all their time and
energies to their business" .The financial institutions discourage women entrepreneurs
on the belief that they can at any time leave their business and become housewives
again. The result is that they are forced to rely on their own savings, and loan from
relatives and family friends.
5. Indian women give more emphasis to family ties and relationships. Married women have
to make a fine balance between business and home. More over the business success is
depends on the support the family members extended to women in the business process
and management. The interest of the family members is a determinant factor in the
realization of women folk business aspirations.

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6. Another argument is that women entrepreneurs have low-level management skills.

They have to depend on office staffs and intermediaries, to get things done, especially,
the marketing and sales side of business. Here there is more probability for business
fallacies like the intermediaries take major part of the surplus or profit. Marketing
means mobility and confidence in dealing with the external world, both of which
women have been discouraged from developing by social conditioning. Even when they
are otherwise in control of an enterprise, they often depend on males of the family in
this area.
7. The male - female competition is another factor, which develop hurdles to women
entrepreneurs in the business management process. Despite the fact that women
entrepreneurs are good in keeping their service prompt and delivery in time, due to
lack of organizational skills compared to male entrepreneurs women have to face
constraints from competition. The confidence to travel across day and night and even
different regions and states are less found in women compared to male entrepreneurs.
This shows the low level freedom of expression and freedom of mobility of the women
entrepreneurs.
8. Knowledge of alternative source of raw materials availability and high negotiation skills
are the basic requirement to run a business. Getting the raw materials from different
souse with discount prices is the factor that determines the profit margin. Lack of
knowledge of availability of the raw materials and low-level negotiation and bargaining
skills are the factors, which affect women entrepreneur’s business adventures.
9. Knowledge of latest technological changes, know how, and education level of the
person are significant factor that affect business. The literacy rate of women in India is
found at low level compared to male population. Many women in developing nations
lack the education needed to spur successful entrepreneurship. They are ignorant of
new technologies or unskilled in their use, and often unable to do research and gain the
necessary training .Although great advances are being made in technology, many
women’s illiteracy, structural difficulties, and lack of access to technical training
prevent the technology from being beneficial or even available to females. According to
The Economist, this lack of knowledge and the continuing treatment of women as
second-class citizens keep them in a pervasive cycle of poverty. The studies indicate
that uneducated women do not have the knowledge of measurement and basic
accounting.
10. Low-level risk taking attitude is another factor affecting women folk decision to get in
to business. Low-level education provides low-level self-confidence and self-reliance to
the women folk to engage in business, which is continuous risk taking and strategic
cession making profession. Investing money, maintaining the operations and ploughing
back money for surplus generation requires high risk taking attitude, courage and

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confidence. Though the risk tolerance ability of the women folk in day-to-day life is
high compared to male members, while in business it is found opposite to that.
11. Achievement motivation of the women folk found less compared to male members.
The low level of education and confidence leads to low level achievement and
advancement motivation among women folk to engage in business operations and
running a business concern.
12. Finally high production cost of some business operations adversely affects the
development of women entrepreneurs. The installation of new machineries during
expansion of the productive capacity and like similar factors dissuades the women
entrepreneurs from venturing into new areas.

Suggestions
On the basis of the aforesaid problems faced by women entrepreneurs and various
other problems too, there is a provision of a number of Strategies for promoting women
entrepreneurship to overcome these problems. Such solutions or remedies can be well
understood as under:-
 Promoting entrepreneurship among women is especially important to tackle the
problems of under employment and unemployment in the society.
 Education has been instrumental in increasing the participation of women in
entrepreneurial activities. The formal education not only helps in acquisition of
requires knowledge for a job, which demands non-traditional skills but also imparts
knowledge about the different occupational opportunities. Good academic background
makes women confident in dealing with problems in business in an effective manner.
Although it is a fact that entrepreneurship is not a special preserve for the educated
but in the case of women already burdened with many social pressures, education is a
powerful tool in breaking down the barriers to successful Entrepreneurship.
Thus education is a liberating force and barriers of caste and class, smoothing out
inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances
 There should be continuous monitoring, improvement of training programmers,
practical experience and personality development programmes to improvise their
over- all personality standards.
 Government should provide better educational facilities and schemes to women folk.
 There should be an incessant attempt to motivate, give confidence, inspire and assist
women entrepreneurs.
 Establishment of proper training institutes for enhancing their level of
work- knowledge, skills, risk-taking abilities, enhancing their capabilities. Training
Centers should provide training to prospective women entrepreneurs free of cost and

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Entrepreneurship Development Programmer should be much more practical oriented.

Inculcation of self-confidence amongst women that they can also run a business should
be one of the prime motives of these programmes.
 Potential women entrepreneurs should be exposed to different types of emerging
opportunities.
 Housewives should be motivated to learn additional income.
 To extend confessional rates facilities and schemes for women entrepreneurs to prosper
in the field of enterprise. Thus by adopting the following aforesaid measures in letter
and spirit the problems associated with women can be solved.
 Offering seed capital, up-liftmen schemes, women entrepreneurs fund etc.
to encourage them economically.
 Positive attitudinal change in the society recognizing the role of women as
entrepreneur may lead to the development of appropriate environment in which
women will be able to exploit their entrepreneurial talents.
 A Women Entrepreneurs Guidance Cell should be set up to handle the various problems
of women entrepreneurs all over the state.
 Creating provision of micro credit system and enterprise credit system to the women
entrepreneurs at local level.  Finance is sine-qua-non for any enterprise. The banking
system is not sufficiently responsive to social banking needs and has not been able to
deal with barriers that hinder women from using or gaining access to credit. Adequate
arrangements must be made for the supply of credit facility at concession rate for the
women entrepreneurs in view of their growing needs.
 Establishment of proper training institutes for enhancing their level of work-
knowledge, skills, risk-taking abilities, enhancing their capabilities.
 A women entrepreneur should herself set up an example by being successful and
should act as a role model. Since children have a tendency to emulate their parents,
the resultant effect would be automatic.

Conclusion
India is a male dominated society and women are assumed to be economically as
well as socially dependent on male members. The absolute dependence seems to be diluted
among the high and middle class women as they are becoming more aware of personal
needs and demanding greater equality.
Women entrepreneurs faced lots of problems at start-up as well as operating stage
like, non-availability of finance, restricted mobility freedom and having to perform dual
role one at home and other at work. Technological advancement and information
technology explosion have reduced the problem of women entrepreneurs. Along with

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technological revolution, mental revolution of society is needed to change the attitude of

the society and provide women with democratic and entrepreneurial platform.
More-over with increasing Government and Non-Government and other financial
institutions assistance for various women entrepreneurs within the economy there can be
significant increase brought about in the growth of women entrepreneurship process.
Still efforts are being made to coordinate with the enterprise activities of women and
providing them utmost financial, morale, psychological support by various institutions
working with in the economy and world-wide.
Thus, Women have the potential and the determination to set up, uphold and
supervise their own enterprises in a very systematic manner. Appropriate support and
encouragement from the Society in general and family members in particular is required to
help these women scale new heights in their business ventures. The right kind of assistance
from family, society and Government can make these Women Entrepreneurs a part of the
mainstream of national economy and they can contribute to the economic progress of India.

References
 Entrepreneurship Development – By S.S Khanka. S. Chand & Company Limited.
(Ram Nagar, New Delhi-10055).
 A Reflection of the Indian Women in Entrepreneurial World
 www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2005-08-07indirap.pdf
 www.oppapers.com › Business & Economy Research Papers
 www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC1073/fc1073.html
 www.academicjournals.org/ajbm/.../Witbooi%20and%20Ukpere.pdf
 www.asiaentrepreneurshipjournal.com/AJESVolIIIss1Malar.pdf

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