The challenges and benefits of empowering women through entrepreneurship in India

Abstract

The future of the world’s women is no longer to look for in Scandinavia or in the U.S., but among the entrepreneurs who line the streets of Mumbai, Hanoi and Sao Paulo. Selling everything from cucumbers to homemade linen, these women represent the cutting-edge of progress for women in the 21st century though considered at the very bottom of their home country’s active population. In the past decades, advancements in women condition were solely the fact of wealthier countries. Yet today, women are increasingly making the greatest strides elsewhere, in the booming developing world - particularly in Brazil, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. Women from the emerging countries are newly empowered by tremendous gains in political representation, legal right and especially, education. “But more importantly, they are rising in the 21st century’s key economic strata: as business owners!” stresses Forbes1 in its article “Women Ascendant: Where Females Are Rising The Fastest” (08/2011). What are the social and economic impacts of a growing women entrepreneur community in India? What shape does this urge for entrepreneurship take and what promises do they hold? How can emerging countries like India leverage this phenomenon to accelerate their development? Why should women entrepreneurship be encouraged? What are the obstacles women entrepreneurs face in India today? These are some of the numerous questions we had in mind. In chosing this subject our objective was multiple. First of all, we wanted to understand how entrepreneurship had evolved across time in this country we were just starting to discover. South Asia’s bright spot for female entrepreneurship is India, with its highly developed support structure of national-level and local organizations for women’s SMEs and early participation in micro-finance. Digging into this subject was a great opportunity to understand the specifics of Indian Culture, so as the issues and outcomes of the Status of Women. Secondly, we wanted to establish a relevant typology of women entrepreneurship in India. The country is vast, inequalities are striking and situation can vary drastically. Confronting points of views from urban and rural India were extremely enriching and enlight the complexity of the subject. Moreover, we decided to focus obstacles faced by these women who take the risk. Depending on the vulnerability of the women, these obstacles can have more or less dramatic consequences. Nonetheless, in their venture, women do systematically have to deal with a number of constraints of similar nature: lack of adequate education, access to funds or networks, submission to domestic commitments and childcare, discriminations are some of the difficulties they encounter, still to often. Last but not least, our desire was to develop a set of arguments in favor of women entrepreneurship. As a vehicle for both economic growth and higher social value we believe that the initiatives of the women we have had a chance to meet definitely profits to their family, community and the society as a whole for it improves women conditions by emancipating her from her traditional ties and for it promotes a new set of values that liberates them from the second-class citizen status. This seems all the more urgent as Tocqueville put in the Democracy in America, in a land where we promote equality, the remaining iniqualities eventually become impossible to bear. Through entrepreneurship, women can be actor of the change and will deliver to those who still have doubts the proof that they deserve the same place as man in the society in which they were born.