Women entrepreneurs: A positive change is certain

For long, there have been far fewer women starting businesses than men. But that is changing

In India, as in many parts of the world, a woman is considered to be a homemaker first. According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2014, Indian women spent an average of 352 minutes per day on unpaid work (men spent 52).

Even in agrarian sections of the country, where women work as hard in the fields as men, they are also expected to manage the home. Women seeking and finding employment in paid jobs outside the home is far from the norm. According to the same WEF report, India’s women make up slightly over a third of the workforce, get paid just over half of what men get for similar work and, on average, earn a quarter of what men do.

Since entrepreneurs typically spend some time in the workforce before starting up, less women in jobs outside the home also translates to fewer women entrepreneurs.

Aside from the multiple societal barriers, there are also legal hurdles for women who start enterprises. For example, a woman cannot be the Karta in a Hindu Undivided Family and is thus ineligible for related tax benefits; and while she can own land, the law gets in the way of her using it as collateral for loan.

Women’s entrepreneurship isn’t an alien concept in India. But much of this enterprise has tended to be small-scale, and in areas in which women are expected to have ‘natural’ expertise. For instance, food-related businesses like baking and catering, clothing-related like tailoring or boutiques, handicrafts, lifestyle sector businesses, and so on. Sairee Chahal, founder of Sheroes.in, a jobs and careers community and platform for women, both the workplace and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, says the advantage of this kind of work is that it offers women flexibility, whether it’s to work fewer or more hours, work from home, or even to be able to literally shut shop and return to housework. The problem is that many of these enterprises also “tend not to scale easily, and are hence not attractive to investors”.

Self-employment, the smallest end of the entrepreneurship spectrum, also sees fewer women than men when you take away the unpaid home work that women do. That has been changing for a while with grassroots initiatives helping women earn from their own labour. The microfinance revolution has also played a large part in helping women start very small businesses.

Chetna Gala Sinha, founder and chairperson of microfinance bank Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, says she has observed that women in the unorganised sector are keen to invest in themselves and, contrary to perception, are not risk-averse. “What gets in the way most,” she says, “is the lack of access to finance. This is because they cannot provide collateral, since property is usually in the name of the men in the family.” This is why she set up Mann Deshi. She argues that while many women work in banks and have risen to the top, banking institutions often lag in designing products suitable for women. Sinha, however, is optimistic about “technology opening the door, creating linkages with the market, with capital”.

Zainab Bawa, co-founder of HasGeek, a company which organises technology conferences, has encountered grassroots entrepreneurship as a graduate student in Maharashtra. “A lot of women I studied became part of what they called ‘gatts’ (groups) back then, and used this mechanism to combat the monopoly of Mahila Milan’s oppressive self-help groups, especially in resettlement colonies in Mumbai. Back then, I found it useful because it helped women get into networks where they could talk, fight, reach out and get somewhat more socio-economically mobile.”

Bawa, who is now an entrepreneur herself, believes “networks that provide support help you build confidence, enable you to learn and share, and more importantly, give you access to information about markets, trends and opportunities that are extremely critical”. She echoes what many women entrepreneurs starting businesses cite as a huge problem: “Current networks are heavily dominated by men, and therefore intimidating and more difficult to become part of.”

Gaps like this are the ones Chahal of Sheroes aims to bridge. Top women professionals have the networks and experience when they make the leap into entrepreneurship. And the bottom of the pyramid has organisations like Sewa and Mann Deshi, and government schemes at the national and state level designed to lift people out of poverty. “The middle is underserved,” she says, “there is almost no institutional support.” And it is from the middle that she believes that India will see its next billion-dollar startup. But a lot of requests she sees coming through Sheroes are from women in smaller cities and towns looking to set up franchise operations for big brands. These women, she says, are not looking to scale up dramatically; they look for financial independence and flexibility. This doesn’t make them attractive to venture capitalists and investors.