Women Entrepreneurs in India – Role of Women Entrepreneurs in Society

According to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, “When women moves forward, the family moves, the village moves, and the nation moves.”

Women entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important, untapped source of economic growth during the last decade. With the spread of education and awareness, Indian women have shifted from the extended kitchen, handicrafts, and traditional cottage industries to non-traditional, higher level of activities.

In the new industrial policy, the government has laid special emphasis on the need of conducting special entrepreneurial training programs for women to enable them to start their own ventures. Financial banks and institutions have also set up special cells to assist women entrepreneurs. This has helped the women a lot in taking up the entrepreneurial activity in India.

Estimates in Europe (both European Union countries and other), indicate that there exist more than 10 million self-employed women and in the United States 6.4 million self-employed women providing employment for 9.2 million people and creating significant sales. Women entrepreneurs not only create new jobs for themselves, but also provide jobs to others. However, the participation of women entrepreneurs is less than male entrepreneurs.

The role of women entrepreneurs is explained in the following points:

i. Employment Generation: It implies that women entrepreneurs not only establish their enterprise, but provide job to others. Women entrepreneurship is about women’s position in the society and their role as entrepreneurs in the same society. It can be understood in two ways, namely, at the individual level (number of self-employed) and at the firm level (number of firms owned by women and their economic impact). In this way, woman entrepreneurs have an important impact on the economy in terms of their ability to create jobs for themselves as well as for others.

ii. Economic Development: It signifies that women entrepreneurs contribute to the gross domestic product of the country by establishing enterprises and producing goods and services. Due to their entrepreneurial activity, women entrepreneurs bring dynamism in market. In this way, they also help in increasing the national income of the country.

iii. Better Utilization of Resources: It implies that the involvement of women in industrial development ensure the effective utilization of all available resources (labor, raw materials, capital). The issue of women in the industrialization process has been emphasized only in the last decade when the ‘Declaration of Mexico in July 1975’, the equality of womanhood and their contribution to individual development became the center of attention.

iv. Improved Quality of Life: It implies that women entrepreneurs are now economically independent and take decisions independently. They are now capable of upbringing their children according to their wish. They are providing quality education to their children and a better living standard to their family members. They not only improve their living standards, but also the living standards of others by providing them the means of earning.