Aspirations and Opinions of Women Engineering Graduates on Taking up Entrepreneurship Activities

Abstract

Women empowerment is an essential component for human resource development. Women in advanced nations are recognized and are more prominent in the business world. In India, although women constitute majority of the total population, entrepreneurial world is still a male dominated one. Highly educated, technically sound and professionally qualified women should be encouraged for managing their own business, rather than dependent on wage employment outlets. A desirable environment is necessary for every woman to inculcate entrepreneurial values and involve greatly in business dealings. Though India have sufficient technically qualified women graduates, only few of them opt to become job givers and majority are job seekers. Coimbatore being an educational hub of South India has many engineering institutions and many girl students are getting educated every year but, how many of them are aspiring to become entrepreneurs with the technical knowledge they've acquired? Institutions are giving importance to placements in companies and for students also, it's a prestige symbol to be employed rather than becoming entrepreneurs. Institutions give more importance to placement training than entrepreneurship development skills in their courses. This study is an attempt to understand the students'/ graduates' opinions, reasons for their hesitations or constraints to become entrepreneurs and training needs during their course of study to become entrepreneurs.