Follow up Study on Women Entrepreneurs: Stories of Women Entrepreneurs - 16 years after

Abstract

The paper describes six case studies of those Women Entrepreneurs who were first interviewed extensively as part of the Research and subsequently a published book called "In Search of Identity" by EDI, India in 1991-1992. A need was felt to undertake follow-up study in view of the fact that over last 16 years there has been sea changes within the country owing to liberalization, globalization and privatization. Whereas on one side, the economic globalization have created opportunities for women having increased access to information, technology, knowledge and opportunities thereby better recognition and quality of life, same time, it has resulted in a significant percent of women accepting poorly paid, unstable jobs and harsh working conditions, and increased their vulnerability to economic and sexual exploitation. The research focus is to understand the processes of facilitating and hindering factors in women led enterprises especially survival and growth, document the experiences of women entrepreneurs in the face of changing society from Gender Lens, understand the perceptions/views of stakeholders; family, employees, bankers/financial institutions, consumers etc., derive lessons for designing Gender Centric entrepreneurship development programmes and draw the attention of support agencies involved in promoting and assisting women entrepreneurs. So far, 50% of the 44 women entrepreneurs could be traced out via web, EDI faculty, chamber of commerce and word of mouth. Three women Entrepreneurs from Ahmedabad, Gujarat were first contacted for developing and pre-testing the check-list for undertaking personal interviews. Subsequently, six women entrepreneurs from Mumbai and Pune were extensively interviewed as well their manufacturing units/products visited. All women entrepreneurs are still continuing with their enterprises with wider scale-up except one some have diversified into other enterprises too. One women entrepreneur from Pune made losses because of unfortunate experience from local manufacturer of machines she ordered, and recent recession. The paper describes the factors that have kept all these women motivated to continue their business, their managerial style and overall experiences over 16 years with respect to family and society by large.