Economic Dependency of Women Entrepreneurs in Micro Enterprises

Abstract

In the beginning of industrialization process, entrepreneurship has been the domain of men, but in later stage women could also assume entrepreneurship. Henry Higgins [2005] says that the future of industrial world is in women's hand as they girls score more marks than boys, more women are taking up jobs than men, more women assume entrepreneurial occupations than men, women make most of the decision of consumer products, women are proving as successful as men in various fields, more women related, service oriented industrial units emerging in, etc. This paper analyses the status of women micro entrepreneurs and try to examine their contribution to the household thereby label whether the family is a dependent unit on women's income or women depend on family's income. It has used the Dependency model of Annemettee Sorensen and Ara Mclanahan [1987] to identify whether the entrepreneurs of this study are dependent unit on family or not. The Dependency model says that if the income of the family [INCF] is greater than the income of the women entrepreneurs [INCW] women entrepreneurs are dependent on family's income and on the other hand if the INCW is greater than INCF, family is the dependent unit on women entrepreneurs' income. The current study examined the entrepreneurial performance of women in micro enterprises in Tiruchirappalli district and analysed the dependency behaviour taking around 130 women owned micro enterprises which are distributed into service, trade and manufacturing enterprises. The sample units were distributed into fourteen categories including tailoring, beauty clinics, readymade garments, stationery stores, general stores, vegetable vending, confectionery, Xerox and communication centres, printing press, beauty clinics, etc. As already pointed out, if the proportion of the income of the women is greater than the proportion of the family income, the dependency level is positive in which women are dependent unit on family and vice versa. The dependency level of the family and the sample entrepreneurs by activities have been analysed and it is observed that the dependency level of women entrepreneurs has been positive for the beauty clinic, tailoring institute, Xerox and telecom centre, typewriting and computer centre running women indicating that the families of these entrepreneurs do not depend on the income of the these women. It further implies that the women assumed these activities not merely out of necessity but to supplement the household income or to spend the leisure time etc. On the other hand, negative dependency level has been observed with tailoring, readymade garments, stationery stores, general stores, vending, confectionary stores, repairing services, catering services and printing activities, indicating that in these enterprises the family is the dependent unit. It also implies that women's earnings in these households are essential and majority of the women in the above unit came to start their units mainly because family forced them to earn to meet the essential needs of the household. Dependency level by age, experience, marital status, community, size of the family etc. have also been analysed and discussed in full paper. The dependency level of the families of entrepreneurs further imply that they are forced to enter into such micro scale of operations, which further forces them to remain in micro scale as whatever is earned is not brought back to business expansion. It also reveals the structural constraints that the women face in balancing both home and business, which does not permit the women to fully devote their time in expanding their scale of operations.