Trends in Growth and Development of Women Entrepreneurship in India: Some Theoretical Insights

Abstract

There was a big gap between the anticipated gains and lived experiences of economic development programs, in the case of newly industrialized countries during 1960's. Awakening to this hard reality was reflected at the policy levels and accordingly, the focus shifted over to other dimensions like integrating people at the bottom to the mainstream. Large sections like women, socially and economically backward people, who more or less remained beyond the reach of planned development effort, started getting priority. In fact a number of international agencies were prevailing upon the governments especially in third world countries to make changes, so that the subsequent development policies were sensitive towards this section. In a similar vein 'women issue' started moving slowly from the margin to the mainstream. Planned efforts at various levels towards this end for over three j decades shows that we have been able to make inroads in to the gaps as sufficient number of women were able to be entrepreneurs. At the same time macro level picture more or less remained the same in spite of our efforts to bring in structural changes. It is very important both for academicians and practitioners to trace the path tread by these development programs because it will have some important insights in the light of which future policies could be framed so that the goal of developing Entrepreneurship amongst women could be pursued with increased rigor. The present paper attempts at this risk. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part attempts at the theorization of women entrepreneurship. It also tries to locate the ambiguities at the theoretical level. The second part attempts to analyse how the theoretical ambiguities have rendered the studies on women entrepreneurship incapable of bringing within its fold majority of women in India. The last section tries to foresee the problems and prospects in the growth and development of women entrepreneurship.