Women Entrepreneurship Under SME Segment : Problems, Challenges and Present Status

Women entrepreneurs in India, represent a dynamic group of women who have broken away from the tradition track and are exploring new vistas and of economic participation. Women face a variety of traditional views and perception of clients, demands at home and other family oppositions leading to lack of support. Great many of them have chosen the entrepreneur's world because of a compelling urge to do something positive. They form the pacesetters for women in their quest for economic independence. Women's entrepreneurship needs to be studied separately for two main reasons. The first reason is that women's entrepreneurship has been recognized during the last decade as an important untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and by being different also provide society with different solutions to management, organisation and business problems as well as to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities.The industries (primarily retail, education and other service industries) chosen by women are often perceived as being less important to economic development and growth than high-technology and manufacturing. Furthermore, mainstream research, policies and programmes tend to be “men streamed” and too often do not take into account the specific needs of women entrepreneurs and would-be women entrepreneurs. As a consequence, equal opportunity between men and women from the perspective of entrepreneurship is still not a reality