Women Entrepreneurship and Gender Issues

Abstract

"A women entrepreneur is one who owns and controls an enterprise having a minimum financial interest of 51% of capital and giving at least 51% of the employment generated in the enterprise to women." Women Entrepreneurship in India has come a long way from papads and pickles to Engineering ,Electronics and Energy popularly known as 3E's. Due to spread of education, favorable government policies towards development of women, entrepreneurship awareness and new kind of avenues more and more women are venturing as entrepreneurs in all kinds of business, economic and other useful activities. Women entrepreneurship plays a vital role to achieve rapid, regionally and socially balanced economic growth. The need for women entrepreneurship development is to empower women by bringing them into the main stream of development and thereby improving their economic status as well as will generate multifaceted socio economic benefit to the country. Gender equality and economic development go hand in hand. Since the early 1980s, the policymakers and planners have become acutely aware of the economic significance of women's productive activities and the nature of their contribution to income generation. The protection of women workers and the promotion of equality between men and women in employment have been areas of longstanding concern. Although the principle of equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women at work is widely accepted in most countries in the world, in practice inequalities persist on a global basis. Enterprise development can make a very significant potential contribution to women's empowerment, gender equality and gender equity and has a key role in gender strategies. This is of very serious concern because badly designed enterprise development can have adverse effects for women, leading to disempowerment and increases in gender inequality.