Factors Influencing Female Entrepreneurship in India

Women’s entrepreneurship, whilst increasing in size and quality across the world, still lags behind in India where many of those enterprises created are low tech micro enterprises which often employ only the entrepreneur themselves. This it has been suggested is due to a variety of factors, such as male prejudice which makes it hard to be taken seriously by funders, a lack of confidence in themselves, lack of access to support and cultural issues in general, for example where women are expected to look after the children. Using both quantitative and qualitative data from a questionnaire and interviews with three diverse female entrepreneurs, it was found that men still had a negative view of female entrepreneurship in India, a view shared by some women also. More specific problems included awareness of help and support and some not wanting to accept help as a sign of weakness. Support from friends and family was mixed, but was useful when offered. Women were broadly positive and confident about their skills and abilities whereas men’s views were more polarised toward female entrepreneurs. Suggestions for improving the situation included more support programs nationally and locally as has been successful elsewhere, but crucially making people more aware of the programmes. Networking, availability of mentors and awareness raising using positive case studies could be used effectively. Reducing male bias it was suggested could begin in university education or even before where entrepreneurship programmes could also be made available to increase the number of those who might start high growth technology businesses rather than micro enterprises.