Issues in Women Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The entrepreneur is the key to economic development'. Nurturing an individual's natural spirit of entrepreneurship is the powerful key to economic development, which takes its major share in developing countries. Small and medium enterprises provide a bulk of employment for the most of the economies. Moreover, small enterprise is frequently invoked as a key player in the process of economic restructuring, local economic development and the reinvigoration of national economies". History is full of evidences of individual entrepreneur whose creativity has led to the industrialization of many nations. The spirit of enterprise transforms ordinary men into entrepreneurs and ideas into economic realities). The origin of women entrepreneurship in India geared up only in last three decades. In India women constitute nearly half the humanity (48.3 per cent: source 1971 census) and in world they are half the adult population. Forming almost half the population, women constitute a tremendous work force. The concept of women as an entrepreneur is becoming a global phenomenon today. All over the world, women are playing a vital role in the business community. David (1981), has rightly observed that "it is impossible to name a single country in which the economy having been to some extent liberated from the their own traditional domestic tasks without them having permitted to play an important role in the society. Only in the last three decades the importance of women in economic development has got its attention. But surprisingly since the inception of small scale industries, the women-owned SSIs are 7 per cent out of the total SSIs Some of the developed and developing countries have been making planned efforts to develop women entrepreneurship to promote national production, balanced area development, dispersal of economic power and provide better employment opportunities. But surprisingly, few attempts have been made to inculcate entrepreneurship. This instigated a line of demarcation and attracted the attention of the researchers, to critically answer to an unsolved question that is what the case in India is? The typical answer to this question is not that much complicated in terms of social angle, an evaluation of the condition of women scenario in pre-independence and post-independence can give a better picture.