Supporting Women Entrepreneurs “Differently”: A Policy Perspective on Women Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Women and female mean same to large group of people in our society. Few are aware of the immense gap in these two words. Where female defines the biological sex of a human, women is a gender defined as per the psychological, social, and cultural arrangement of a particular region. Rather than dividing on the basis of biological sex, our society is divided on the basis of gender; men and women. Gender is framed with a set defined role as per the socio-culture, according to which women are supposed to be home-makers and childcare takers and men have to be involved in economic activities for their family. Adhering to these roles, we are involved in doing gender well or appropriately, and doing the role of other gender points toward doing gender differently. With this set line of rules in our society, when a women step in economic activities, it not only brings the concept of gender differently, but a whole new set of challenges and hurdles for women. Same is the case with women entrepreneurs. With a rise in entrepreneurial upliftment for development of economies, many researchers, academicians, policy-makers are interested in this topic. Parallel to this, it brings our attention towards women entrepreneurs, who have their own challenges which erupts not because they are female, but because of being a woman. In a society where women are not appreciated getting involved in economic activity, having their own enterprise is complicated with multidimensional obstacles. Focusing on challenges of women entrepreneurs through the lens of social role with social role theory as a foundation of our discussion, this paper tries to understand whether the current policies, supports, and initiatives are framed keeping these socio-cultural issues on the table.