born2rule
December 21st, 2007, 01:07 AM
some facts on women entrepreneur...
in this thread i will be posting articles related to women entrepreneur...
it will b of gr8 help to sem 6 students in studying current articles...most probably in solving cases on this topic...
Empirical evidence shows that women contribute significantly to the running of family businesses mostly in the form of unpaid effort and skills. The value of this effort is underestimated both by the families that take it for granted and in academic studies. On the other hand, many of the enterprises defined as being run by women (that is, enterprises in which women hold the controlling share) are in fact run in their names by men who control operations and decision making. Programmes meant to reach women entrepreneurs can succeed only if they take note of this paradox as well as of the familial and social conditioning that reduces the confidence, independence and mobility of women.
Programmes for encouraging entrepreneurship among women are doomed to fail or at best to succeed partially when taken up in isolation. This is because entrepreneurship by definition implies being in control of one's life and activities. It is precisely this independence that society has denied to women all along.
Promoting entrepreneurship for women will require an even greater reversal of traditional attitudes than the mere creation of jobs for women would. This does not mean that we should wait for societal change to take place first. But it does imply that the programme should go beyond subsidies and credit allocation to attitudinal changes, group formation, training and other support services.
Training in entrepreneurial attitudes should start at the high school level through well-designed courses which build confidence through behavioral games. This exercise would illustrate practical application of the academic knowledge being imparted regarding management (financial, legal, etc.) of an enterprise. This curriculum should include simple project work designed to give hands on experience of assessing the marketability of a commodity or a service. EDI Ahmedabad appears to be running a programme on these lines in Gujarat which could be replicated elsewhere. While making this compulsory for girls at the high school level, however, care must be taken to ensure quality and the syllabus should be reviewed continuously on the basis of the feedback received using professional inputs.
To release women from the constraints on mobility that society imposes on them throughout their lives, high school girls should be compulsorily taught to cycle. There is proof that increased mobility contributes immensely to raising confidence levels. An additional measure that may increase mobility and confidence is to compulsorily train girls also in the methods and techniques of self defence.
Training in Skills
Skill development is being done in women's polytechnics and industrial training institutes. Under various schemes like the World Bank sponsored programme to upgrade polytechnics, separate institutes have been set up for women. From the inception these should have 100 percent quality hostel facilities with adequate security arrangements, as this is a major cause for poor occupancy and parental disinclination to send their daughters to such institutes. Under no pretext should institutes set up exclusively for women be converted to men's institutes. The course design should keep in mind the special needs of women, such as their preference to work from their homes, which would enable them to also fulfill their household responsibilities. This should not, however, result in mechanically restricting them to low technology linked skills traditionally believed to be suitable for women. Several hi-tech functions with substantial value addition and good profitability could also be undertaken within homes and the courses should be imaginatively and innovatively designed.
The common practice of selecting occupations for women on the basis that women are only supplementary income providers and, therefore, do not require a full day's wage for a full day's work has resulted in their large-scale exploitation. Activities in which women are trained should focus on their marketability and profitability, and not be routinely restricted to making pickles and garments. A high power and professionally involved committee must constantly review the courses and the curriculum on the basis of evaluation studies and market developments. In addition to skill development, these institutes should also provide practical management inputs.
• Neighbourhood entrepreneurs
• Gender revolution in dairy
• Charting their own course
A major hurdle for trained women is the initiation into independent professional work. Families routinely provide financial and emotional support for sons that they would never extend to daughters. Parents and daughters together need to be convinced that the skills learned in the polytechnics could provide them with profitable occupations. In women's institutes, therefore, there is a strong case for introducing an additional year of training when the pupils who have been taught skills are put to work in training-cum-production workshops, whose produce is sold and income earned.
Appropriate training is still the key to a successful programme to develop entrepreneurship among women. There are funds available from several sources; finding effective trainers is the greater problem. NGOs like RUDSET in Karnataka have succeeded in achieving reasonably high success levels, but others including governmental bodies have still not reached these levels. Continuous monitoring and improvement of training programmes should eventually spread the cult of entrepreneurship among young women.
Any programme for women entrepreneurs is vulnerable to abuses by individuals who are not entitled to the benefits. These individuals could exploit the programme by using the truly deserving beneficiaries as fronts for their personal interests. This practice cannot be curbed by exhortation or control; women beneficiaries must themselves be induced to claim greater decision-making authority in family businesses, whether run in their names or not. This can only come from greater confidence induced by greater knowledge and experience of dealing with the external world and from moving with other successful women entrepreneurs.
All this can be achieved in a training environment, especially one in which the woman is distanced from the normal restrictive family environment and is taught to recognise her own psychological needs and express them. To encourage more passive women entrepreneurs whose menfolk run businesses in their names, and to actively involve the women in their businesses, we must aim at covering all the women who claim to run 'women's enterprises' in training programmes. Repeated exposure to women who are successfully managing enterprises might encourage some women who are passive now to involve themselves to a greater extent in the entreprises to which they have lent their name.
The availability of finance and other facilities like industrial sheds and land for women entrepreneurs is often constrained by restrictions that do not account for practical realities. Funding is not often available for activities in which women are predominantly involved. The field of marketing provides an example. Women of all income levels are engaged in marketing activity from vegetable vending to the sale of more sophisticated items. There is no effective institutional channel to make money available for this activity.
A look at the various schemes available reveals that under the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), finance is not denied for setting up a shop, and the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) extends assistance for trading activity including simple trade finance. IRDP is confined to rural areas and PMRY covers urban areas. Both schemes are limited to persons with very low income levels.
The greatest constraint is that availability of funds is very low since the schemes operate solely through banks which are extremely reluctant to extend trade-related finance to small customers because of the risks and operational costs. State finance corporations and financing institutions are not permitted by statute to extend purely trade related finance not linked to asset creation. Women's development corporations, however, are fully aware of the significant presence of women in this area but have only a catalytic role in financing. They must necessarily work through normal channels if they have to gain access to open-ended financing.
Some schemes have tried to get around this problem by offering working capital assistance if it is supported by group formation through NGOs, banks or government. This, however, is limited to very low income groups. That is, a woman or any small business has no access to institutionalised trade finance and must operate only through very expensive informal channels. Yet it is perfectly possible to extend the usual institutional interest rates to this area by taking suitable collateral (after all, the alternative is for loanees to pay exorbitant rates to private moneylenders) or by progressively building up collateral from earnings over time and by initially working in regional clusters to facilitate operations. The effort could yield growth in accounts and deposits and other businesses too. Any move to make banks and institutions enter this area is likely to benefit women more than men.
The teaching profession constitutes a large component of the service sector, and employs large numbers of women. Yet funding is not extended by financial institutions or banks for setting up, equipping or running teaching institutions. Educational institutions can be justified on purely commercial grounds since they have today become crucial determinants in companies deciding to locate themselves in particular places. Software personnel are notoriously unenthusiastic about working in cities where high quality school level educational facilities are not available. It thus makes both economic and social sense to emphasise funding for creating good schools.
in this thread i will be posting articles related to women entrepreneur...
it will b of gr8 help to sem 6 students in studying current articles...most probably in solving cases on this topic...
Empirical evidence shows that women contribute significantly to the running of family businesses mostly in the form of unpaid effort and skills. The value of this effort is underestimated both by the families that take it for granted and in academic studies. On the other hand, many of the enterprises defined as being run by women (that is, enterprises in which women hold the controlling share) are in fact run in their names by men who control operations and decision making. Programmes meant to reach women entrepreneurs can succeed only if they take note of this paradox as well as of the familial and social conditioning that reduces the confidence, independence and mobility of women.
Programmes for encouraging entrepreneurship among women are doomed to fail or at best to succeed partially when taken up in isolation. This is because entrepreneurship by definition implies being in control of one's life and activities. It is precisely this independence that society has denied to women all along.
Promoting entrepreneurship for women will require an even greater reversal of traditional attitudes than the mere creation of jobs for women would. This does not mean that we should wait for societal change to take place first. But it does imply that the programme should go beyond subsidies and credit allocation to attitudinal changes, group formation, training and other support services.
Training in entrepreneurial attitudes should start at the high school level through well-designed courses which build confidence through behavioral games. This exercise would illustrate practical application of the academic knowledge being imparted regarding management (financial, legal, etc.) of an enterprise. This curriculum should include simple project work designed to give hands on experience of assessing the marketability of a commodity or a service. EDI Ahmedabad appears to be running a programme on these lines in Gujarat which could be replicated elsewhere. While making this compulsory for girls at the high school level, however, care must be taken to ensure quality and the syllabus should be reviewed continuously on the basis of the feedback received using professional inputs.
To release women from the constraints on mobility that society imposes on them throughout their lives, high school girls should be compulsorily taught to cycle. There is proof that increased mobility contributes immensely to raising confidence levels. An additional measure that may increase mobility and confidence is to compulsorily train girls also in the methods and techniques of self defence.
Training in Skills
Skill development is being done in women's polytechnics and industrial training institutes. Under various schemes like the World Bank sponsored programme to upgrade polytechnics, separate institutes have been set up for women. From the inception these should have 100 percent quality hostel facilities with adequate security arrangements, as this is a major cause for poor occupancy and parental disinclination to send their daughters to such institutes. Under no pretext should institutes set up exclusively for women be converted to men's institutes. The course design should keep in mind the special needs of women, such as their preference to work from their homes, which would enable them to also fulfill their household responsibilities. This should not, however, result in mechanically restricting them to low technology linked skills traditionally believed to be suitable for women. Several hi-tech functions with substantial value addition and good profitability could also be undertaken within homes and the courses should be imaginatively and innovatively designed.
The common practice of selecting occupations for women on the basis that women are only supplementary income providers and, therefore, do not require a full day's wage for a full day's work has resulted in their large-scale exploitation. Activities in which women are trained should focus on their marketability and profitability, and not be routinely restricted to making pickles and garments. A high power and professionally involved committee must constantly review the courses and the curriculum on the basis of evaluation studies and market developments. In addition to skill development, these institutes should also provide practical management inputs.
• Neighbourhood entrepreneurs
• Gender revolution in dairy
• Charting their own course
A major hurdle for trained women is the initiation into independent professional work. Families routinely provide financial and emotional support for sons that they would never extend to daughters. Parents and daughters together need to be convinced that the skills learned in the polytechnics could provide them with profitable occupations. In women's institutes, therefore, there is a strong case for introducing an additional year of training when the pupils who have been taught skills are put to work in training-cum-production workshops, whose produce is sold and income earned.
Appropriate training is still the key to a successful programme to develop entrepreneurship among women. There are funds available from several sources; finding effective trainers is the greater problem. NGOs like RUDSET in Karnataka have succeeded in achieving reasonably high success levels, but others including governmental bodies have still not reached these levels. Continuous monitoring and improvement of training programmes should eventually spread the cult of entrepreneurship among young women.
Any programme for women entrepreneurs is vulnerable to abuses by individuals who are not entitled to the benefits. These individuals could exploit the programme by using the truly deserving beneficiaries as fronts for their personal interests. This practice cannot be curbed by exhortation or control; women beneficiaries must themselves be induced to claim greater decision-making authority in family businesses, whether run in their names or not. This can only come from greater confidence induced by greater knowledge and experience of dealing with the external world and from moving with other successful women entrepreneurs.
All this can be achieved in a training environment, especially one in which the woman is distanced from the normal restrictive family environment and is taught to recognise her own psychological needs and express them. To encourage more passive women entrepreneurs whose menfolk run businesses in their names, and to actively involve the women in their businesses, we must aim at covering all the women who claim to run 'women's enterprises' in training programmes. Repeated exposure to women who are successfully managing enterprises might encourage some women who are passive now to involve themselves to a greater extent in the entreprises to which they have lent their name.
The availability of finance and other facilities like industrial sheds and land for women entrepreneurs is often constrained by restrictions that do not account for practical realities. Funding is not often available for activities in which women are predominantly involved. The field of marketing provides an example. Women of all income levels are engaged in marketing activity from vegetable vending to the sale of more sophisticated items. There is no effective institutional channel to make money available for this activity.
A look at the various schemes available reveals that under the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), finance is not denied for setting up a shop, and the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) extends assistance for trading activity including simple trade finance. IRDP is confined to rural areas and PMRY covers urban areas. Both schemes are limited to persons with very low income levels.
The greatest constraint is that availability of funds is very low since the schemes operate solely through banks which are extremely reluctant to extend trade-related finance to small customers because of the risks and operational costs. State finance corporations and financing institutions are not permitted by statute to extend purely trade related finance not linked to asset creation. Women's development corporations, however, are fully aware of the significant presence of women in this area but have only a catalytic role in financing. They must necessarily work through normal channels if they have to gain access to open-ended financing.
Some schemes have tried to get around this problem by offering working capital assistance if it is supported by group formation through NGOs, banks or government. This, however, is limited to very low income groups. That is, a woman or any small business has no access to institutionalised trade finance and must operate only through very expensive informal channels. Yet it is perfectly possible to extend the usual institutional interest rates to this area by taking suitable collateral (after all, the alternative is for loanees to pay exorbitant rates to private moneylenders) or by progressively building up collateral from earnings over time and by initially working in regional clusters to facilitate operations. The effort could yield growth in accounts and deposits and other businesses too. Any move to make banks and institutions enter this area is likely to benefit women more than men.
The teaching profession constitutes a large component of the service sector, and employs large numbers of women. Yet funding is not extended by financial institutions or banks for setting up, equipping or running teaching institutions. Educational institutions can be justified on purely commercial grounds since they have today become crucial determinants in companies deciding to locate themselves in particular places. Software personnel are notoriously unenthusiastic about working in cities where high quality school level educational facilities are not available. It thus makes both economic and social sense to emphasise funding for creating good schools.