A Study on Challenges Faced by Rural Women Entrepreneurs in Rajasthan

Abstract

Women entrepreneur is defined by Ahmad and et al (2011) as a woman who have initiated a business and is actively involved in managing it, and owns at least 50% of the firm and have been in operation one year or longer. Women-entrepreneurs have been making a considerable impact in almost all the segments of the economy. In India “Entrepreneurship” is very limited amongst women especially in the formal sector, which is less than 5% of all the businesses. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind which every woman has in her but has not been capitalized in India in the way in which it should have been. Women were earlier perceived as weaker sections that are not capable enough to take leadership role. But due to recent change in socioeconomic and political environment, now people have started to accept leading role of women in our society and women empowerment has become the buss word for ensuring sustainable economic development. The Self Help Groups (SHGs) are considered to be the institutional innovation that fosters empowerment of economically and socially deprived women in India. Rural Women are involved in different micro entrepreneurship through different SHG’s thereby enabling them to become economically independent. Still these women are faced with many challenges and the study was undertaken to analyze the problems faced by rural women entrepreneurs. Interview method was used to collect data from women. From the collected data attempt was made to find out the most significant challenges faced by them and to suggest appropriate strategies to over come the same.

Keywords: women entrepreneurs, challenges, strategies to empower women entrepreneurs