Women Entrepreneurship in North-East India: Major Challenges

Abstract

Emergence of women entrepreneurs in the economy help in building economic independence of the families, improve the social status of women, promote economic development, and solve the problem of unemployment and poverty. North-east India is the home of eight sisters of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Tripura. The pace of industrialization in the North East India is very slow. However, the north-eastern India is seen as a region where more women are involved in the income generating activity than women of the other parts of the country. It was revealed that among the full time weavers in the North East, 82.2% are women weavers. Women are engage in the trade and business activities. In this northeastern part of the country, several financial institutions, banks and organization have come to the rescue of small entrepreneurs. Here, the entrepreneurial class is usually the small business owners and specially the tiny and cottage unit owners. The region is however lacking in infrastructure and suffering from law and order problem. Nevertheless, ambitious young women entrepreneurs are on the rise. This present paper focuses on the in-depth study of the contribution of women in the socio-economic development, examining the different sectors of women entrepreneurs in north-east India, study the major challenges faced by the women entrepreneurs and also finding the guidance mechanism received by them from different agencies.