Women entrepreneurship: Time to turnaround
Saturday, 23 June 2007
Md. Amlan Jahid Haque
ENTREPRENEURSHIP has been conceptualised as a process which goes on into the making organisations of all sizes and types and it is distinct from, but dependent on, specific individuals'. Approached in this method, entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of creating value by bringing together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity.
This technique requires both an entrepreneurial event and an entrepreneurial agent. The agent is an individual or group that assumes personal responsibility for bringing the event to execution. As well as the event refers to the conceptualisation and implementation of a new venture. With this in view, women's entrepreneurship has been recognised during the last decade as an important untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and being different in approaches also provide the society with different solutions to management, organisation and business problems as well as to these related to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities.
On the other hand, the topic of women in entrepreneurship has been largely neglected both in the society in general and in the social sciences. Not only have women lower participation rates in entrepreneurship than men but they also generally choose to start and manage firms and industries of different types than men tend to do. The industries including education, primarily retail, and other service industries chosen by women are often perceived as being less important to economic development and growth than high technology and manufacturing. usually, mainstream research, policies and programmers tend to be "men streamed" and too often do not take into account the specific needs of women entrepreneurs. As an effect, equal opportunity between men and women from the perspective of entrepreneurship is still not a reality.
Women's entrepreneurship deals with both the situation of women in a society and the role of entrepreneurship in that society. Although entrepreneurship and the gender system have been widely researched, they have been mainly researched separately. Relatively little attention has been directed towards women's entrepreneurship. In recent times, both researchers and different policy institutes have started to recognise that the gender system as anywhere else in the society plays also an important role in shaping entrepreneurship and economic growth.
In the recent times, the revival of interest in entrepreneurship and small business development has taken place in Europe, the USA and many other countries. There appears to exist a consensus that entrepreneurship education and training has a major role to play in the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities and related skills (European Commission, 2002). Fundamentally, entrepreneurship education and training consists of three different perspectives: the educational system (from primary to university level), the vocational training system, and the organisational approach (Matlay, 1999). By the effort of entrepreneurship the developed countries have well established their foothold in global economy.
Bangladesh Population Policy indicates that the population should stabilise at 210 million by 2060, if replacement-level fertility is reached by 2010. This estimate of future population size is reasonably consistent with the World Bank projections from 1994 (Bos et al., 1994). A per the United Nations projections 1996 revision (United Nations, 1996), Bangladesh's population density provided further evidence of the problems the nation faced. In 1901 an average of 216 persons inhabited one square kilometre. By 1951 that number had increased to 312 per square kilometre and, in 1988, reached 821. By the year 2000, population density was projected to exceed 1,000 persons per square kilometre. With this overloaded population, employment crisis is one of the major reasons in way to boosting up the economic growth. It is important to observe that around half of this population are women.
For the purpose of economic development and with the observation of barriers and challenges in Bangladesh, along with the Government the NGOs are providing many services mainly in the directions of micro-credit for poverty alleviation, informal education and training for human resource development(HRD). Edwards and Hulme (1996) assert that both of these two patterns of functions allow a huge mass at least to involve in a thought for empowerment. A number of Bangladeshi NGOs under HRD provides micro-credit for poverty alleviation with the intention of promoting poor women's increasing entrepreneurship. For the poor, particularly women, NGOs creates a widespread grassroots network and are trying to empower them. Their new skills acquired through training and access to investment capital through micro credit are supposed to change their status in the community.
Women loanees of NGOs' micro-credit programmes may use credit as a bargaining cheap to allow them access to other opportunities available through credit organisations- opportunities to congregate to other women, to have access to skills training and functional education or health inputs (Goetz and Gupta, 1996). The difficulty is that it needs inspecting how these programmes help poor women to perceive them as potential entrepreneurs, and how far the Government and the NGO group members can play a role to support women's entrepreneurships.
On the other hand, it can be said that economic and educational barriers concern women and men to a similar extent whereas cultural barriers affect mainly women in Bangladesh. These are severe mainly at the stage when a decision to establish a personal business is being made due to the fact that entrepreneurship, including maintaining a business, is culturally associated with the male behaviour. Women also face more challenges because they usually tend to be less courageous, while in hard conditions of economic transformation the necessity to take risks should be taken into account much more than in the conditions of a stabilised economy.
Women are also left out of informal networks, which facilitate establishing positions in business, thus more often they feel insecure, than men do. They lack confidence in their success. Women less often have access to capital or resources to enable them to take advantage of bank credits. Finally, women are faced with specific obstacles like family responsibilities and social drawbacks that have to be overcome in order to give them access to the same opportunities as men.
Increased participation of women in the labour force is a prerequisite for improving the position of women in the society and as self-employed women. Thus for better women entrepreneurial process especially for knowledge about the economic importance of women's entrepreneurship and their particular strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, we need to improve the position of women in the society and generally increase the possibility for them to engage in entrepreneurial activities.
However, more targeted initiatives are also needed to support women entrepreneurs. As entrepreneurship creates wealth and reduces unemployment, women entrepreneurs contribute to industrial as well as to economic growth, improved living standards and higher tax revenues to a nation's treasury. Not surprisingly, the Government has to spend considerable sums trying to create women entrepreneurs because it is the time for a turnaround.
The writer is Lecturer, School of Business, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB)
ENTREPRENEURSHIP has been conceptualised as a process which goes on into the making organisations of all sizes and types and it is distinct from, but dependent on, specific individuals'. Approached in this method, entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of creating value by bringing together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity.
This technique requires both an entrepreneurial event and an entrepreneurial agent. The agent is an individual or group that assumes personal responsibility for bringing the event to execution. As well as the event refers to the conceptualisation and implementation of a new venture. With this in view, women's entrepreneurship has been recognised during the last decade as an important untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and being different in approaches also provide the society with different solutions to management, organisation and business problems as well as to these related to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities.
On the other hand, the topic of women in entrepreneurship has been largely neglected both in the society in general and in the social sciences. Not only have women lower participation rates in entrepreneurship than men but they also generally choose to start and manage firms and industries of different types than men tend to do. The industries including education, primarily retail, and other service industries chosen by women are often perceived as being less important to economic development and growth than high technology and manufacturing. usually, mainstream research, policies and programmers tend to be "men streamed" and too often do not take into account the specific needs of women entrepreneurs. As an effect, equal opportunity between men and women from the perspective of entrepreneurship is still not a reality.
Women's entrepreneurship deals with both the situation of women in a society and the role of entrepreneurship in that society. Although entrepreneurship and the gender system have been widely researched, they have been mainly researched separately. Relatively little attention has been directed towards women's entrepreneurship. In recent times, both researchers and different policy institutes have started to recognise that the gender system as anywhere else in the society plays also an important role in shaping entrepreneurship and economic growth.
In the recent times, the revival of interest in entrepreneurship and small business development has taken place in Europe, the USA and many other countries. There appears to exist a consensus that entrepreneurship education and training has a major role to play in the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities and related skills (European Commission, 2002). Fundamentally, entrepreneurship education and training consists of three different perspectives: the educational system (from primary to university level), the vocational training system, and the organisational approach (Matlay, 1999). By the effort of entrepreneurship the developed countries have well established their foothold in global economy.
Bangladesh Population Policy indicates that the population should stabilise at 210 million by 2060, if replacement-level fertility is reached by 2010. This estimate of future population size is reasonably consistent with the World Bank projections from 1994 (Bos et al., 1994). A per the United Nations projections 1996 revision (United Nations, 1996), Bangladesh's population density provided further evidence of the problems the nation faced. In 1901 an average of 216 persons inhabited one square kilometre. By 1951 that number had increased to 312 per square kilometre and, in 1988, reached 821. By the year 2000, population density was projected to exceed 1,000 persons per square kilometre. With this overloaded population, employment crisis is one of the major reasons in way to boosting up the economic growth. It is important to observe that around half of this population are women.
For the purpose of economic development and with the observation of barriers and challenges in Bangladesh, along with the Government the NGOs are providing many services mainly in the directions of micro-credit for poverty alleviation, informal education and training for human resource development(HRD). Edwards and Hulme (1996) assert that both of these two patterns of functions allow a huge mass at least to involve in a thought for empowerment. A number of Bangladeshi NGOs under HRD provides micro-credit for poverty alleviation with the intention of promoting poor women's increasing entrepreneurship. For the poor, particularly women, NGOs creates a widespread grassroots network and are trying to empower them. Their new skills acquired through training and access to investment capital through micro credit are supposed to change their status in the community.
Women loanees of NGOs' micro-credit programmes may use credit as a bargaining cheap to allow them access to other opportunities available through credit organisations- opportunities to congregate to other women, to have access to skills training and functional education or health inputs (Goetz and Gupta, 1996). The difficulty is that it needs inspecting how these programmes help poor women to perceive them as potential entrepreneurs, and how far the Government and the NGO group members can play a role to support women's entrepreneurships.
On the other hand, it can be said that economic and educational barriers concern women and men to a similar extent whereas cultural barriers affect mainly women in Bangladesh. These are severe mainly at the stage when a decision to establish a personal business is being made due to the fact that entrepreneurship, including maintaining a business, is culturally associated with the male behaviour. Women also face more challenges because they usually tend to be less courageous, while in hard conditions of economic transformation the necessity to take risks should be taken into account much more than in the conditions of a stabilised economy.
Women are also left out of informal networks, which facilitate establishing positions in business, thus more often they feel insecure, than men do. They lack confidence in their success. Women less often have access to capital or resources to enable them to take advantage of bank credits. Finally, women are faced with specific obstacles like family responsibilities and social drawbacks that have to be overcome in order to give them access to the same opportunities as men.
Increased participation of women in the labour force is a prerequisite for improving the position of women in the society and as self-employed women. Thus for better women entrepreneurial process especially for knowledge about the economic importance of women's entrepreneurship and their particular strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, we need to improve the position of women in the society and generally increase the possibility for them to engage in entrepreneurial activities.
However, more targeted initiatives are also needed to support women entrepreneurs. As entrepreneurship creates wealth and reduces unemployment, women entrepreneurs contribute to industrial as well as to economic growth, improved living standards and higher tax revenues to a nation's treasury. Not surprisingly, the Government has to spend considerable sums trying to create women entrepreneurs because it is the time for a turnaround.
The writer is Lecturer, School of Business, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB)