Challenges and Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Entrepreneurs play an important role in an economy. These are the people who have the skills and initiative, necessary to take good new ideas to market and make the right decisions to make the idea profitable. The reward for the risks taken is the potential economic profits the entrepreneur could earn. Technically, a "women entrepreneur" is any women who organizes and manages any enterprise, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Women entrepreneurship is gaining importance in India in the wake of economic liberalization and globalization. The policy and institutional framework for developing entrepreneurial skills, providing vocation education and training has widened the horizon for economic empowerment of women. However, women constitute only one third of the economic enterprises. There exist a plethora of successful business women entrepreneurs both in social and economic fields in India. The present paper endeavors to study the concept of women entrepreneur and challenges faced by them in India. This paper is mostly based on secondary data and observations. An extensive literature review is done on women entrepreneurs. At the end some major problems faced by Indian women entrepreneurs, factors influencing women entrepreneurship.