Women Entrepreneurship in Modern India Opportunities, Trends and Challenges

Modern business is witnessing robust activity and innovations in two areas – entrepreneurship and human resource management (HRM) and the two are not necessarily separate. Entrepreneurship is being redefined. With qualitative changes in development indices in general and women development in particular, newer and more challenging areas and roles for women are being explored and extended. Women entrepreneurs are being identified for their independent contributions. Development of women entrepreneurship is considered a lucrative leverage to acquire a level playing field for women, in a male predominant society and economy. In a country like India where some of the women are much neglected, there are some who have soared higher. Thanks to these powerful ladies, that they have faced struggles challenges and made their way to the top list of entrepreneurs in India. This has not only helped the society economically but also has done a lot in terms of exposing the potential that a woman holds. Women as business leaders, team leaders, innovators etc. are having a multiplier effect on the process of women empowerment too. Women constitute around half of the total world population. So is in India also. In modern societies, they have come out of the four walls to participate in all sorts of activities. The global evidences buttress that women have been performing exceedingly well in different spheres of activities like academics, politics, administration, social work and so on. The focus on economic development has made women the ‘subjects’ rather than ‘objects’ of development and ‘change agents’ rather than ‘welfare recipients’. In the past rural women concentrated on traditional activities, but now due to the spread of education and favorable government policies towards self-employment and skill development, women have changed their attitude and diverted towards non-traditional activities too. (e.g. engineering, IT etc.). However, the dual role of women still remains a dilemma and a challenge. Here too many have succeeded in ‘management’ of resources including time. Entrepreneurship provides them a satisfaction and assimilates a deep sense of accomplishment to create their own individuality in the society. This paper analyses the role and contributions of women entrepreneurs in different sectors. The objectives of this paper are (i) to evaluate the present status of women entrepreneurship and its determinants; and (ii) to identify the various problems and alternative avenues/strategies in promoting integrated women entrepreneurship in India. The study is a qualitative one and is based on secondary data