The Socio–Cultural, Socio-Economic and Support of Family Members on the Development of Women Entrepreneurs, Belonging in Lower Middle Class Group

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is the core of economic development. It is a multidimensional task and essentially a creative activity. Entrepreneur is key factor of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is a person who has enterprising quality, takes initiative and establishes an economic activity or enterprise. Starting and operating an enterprise involves considerable risk and effort on the part of the entrepreneurs, particularly in the light of high failure rate. Women entrepreneurship is a recent phenomenon. This study was conducted on hundred women entrepreneurs selected through random sampling technique from southern part of Kolkata in West Bengal. Boutiques, beauty parlors, tailoring shops, handcraft, P.C.O's, general grocery stores are the enterprises selected for the study. The objective of the study is to understand the Socio-Cultural, Socio- Economic and support of family members for the development of Women Entrepreneur who are generally coming from lower middle class with average family income Rs. 12,000. But the southern part of Kolkata is more developed and generally high middle class or upper class people stay here. So, doing business in such an area is really challenging; every time entrepreneurs have to maintain good standard and quality to sell products or services. After analysing the data it was found that most of the women entered into the entrepreneurship around the age of 26 and above. This gives an impression that women entrepreneurs by this age have already completed their education and they want to make themselves able to carry the burden of their family. Not necessary that all of them are married. Educational background of the women entrepreneurs also seems to be quite impressive, as most of them have completed their studies up to graduation. Most of them have found to be doing household works before starting their business. Most of them were not doing any other service or private jobs. This could be due to their responsibilities of household works and issues of raising children. The enterprises started by women are greatly influenced by the decisions and desires of the members of the family. It is found from the study that women entrepreneurs who receive support from family, relatives and other support systems could manage their own enterprises successfully. An attempt was made in this study to examine the role of family for successful women entrepreneurship. The results revealed that women need for effective enterprise management, a large quantity of cooperation and encouragement in the sphere of activity, at all levels - home and in society and also from Governmental organizations.