Correlates for Emancipation of Women Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Empirical Study on Women Entrepreneurs in Food Processing

Abstract

The food processing industry sector in India was one of the largest in terms of production, consumption, export and growth prospects, and women being the traditional forerunners in food processing in household as a whole draws a major attention in this sector. Women entrepreneurship was not considerably high in India in comparison with other developing countries and developed countries, although it started much before than other countries. The Government envisaged measures to empower them for instance, trade related entrepreneurship assistance development (TREAD) for women was designed to empower women economically through the development of their entrepreneurial skills by eliminating constraints faced by them. It included assistance in form of loans, trade related training, trade information, counselling, and extension activities relating to product and market development. Thus, in spite of 'fundamental rights' 'equal status' 'tread', and other measures, women entrepreneurship was lagging behind, because the basic three concepts of entrepreneur, environment and support system were not integrated. However, several factors, which affected women entrepreneurship in India, were lack of appropriate finances, education and training, and favourable societal attitudes and familial problems. In addition to that, personality characteristics of the entrepreneur played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining any enterprising activity, thus in entrepreneurial growth. The individual's personality traits and characteristics account for the entrepreneurial manifestations and psychosocial dispositions in any entrepreneurship development activity, especially, in the context of emancipating entrepreneurial base more so in inter-relating entrepreneurial success. The effects of social variables, like education, experience, family could confound the output leading to poor entrepreneurial success. This made crucial to understand the psychosocial profile of women entrepreneurs, which could designate appropriate interventions in terms of policies and programmes exclusively in the case of women entrepreneurs in food processing enterprises. Thus, the present study attempted to assess the inter-relationships, nature and degree of psychosocial profile correlates with socio-background of women entrepreneurs.