Socio economic status of women entrepreneurs in Kathmandu Metropolis

Abstract

It is generally accepted that gender equality significantly helps economic development of the country. Since the early 1980s policy makers and planners have become acutely aware of the women’s role on productive activities and the nature of their contributions to income generation. It has been firmly established that women in Nepal are vital and productive contributors to the national economy, however, their access to knowledge, skills, resources, opportunities and power are still low. The women constitute a little over one half of Nepal’s population, even though they are ranked lower than men in almost every social indicators of the country. Nepal is a least developed poor country and women are the poorest of the poor, a relatively more deprived segment even from among the poor. However, over the past decades, women’s participation in economic activities has moved beyond agriculture towards the local market economy demonstrating sunshine towomen entrepreneurship. Nepalese women gradually are moving into small businesses and self-employment ventures thereby creating many formal and informal opportunities of employment. Women are increasingly migrating to urban areas for the employment in cottage industries, such as carpet weaving, textiles and handicrafts. In this context, women’s entrepreneurship and their socio-economic status is relevant issue for the study. This issue 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, organization and business problems as well as to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, they still represent a minority of all entrepreneurs. Thus there exists a market failure discriminating against women’s possibility to become entrepreneurs and their possibility to become successful entrepreneurs. This market failure needs to be addressed by policy makers so that the economic potential of this group can be fully utilized. While without a doubt the economic impact of women is substantial, it still lacks a reliable picture describing in detail that specific impact. The second reason is that the topic of women entrepreneurship has been largely neglected in the society. Not only have women lower participation rates in entrepreneurship than men but they also generally choose to start and manage firms in different industries than men tend to do. The industries chosen by women are often perceived as being less important to economic development and growth than hightechnology and manufacturing. Furthermore, mainstream research, policies and programs tend to be “men streamed” and too often do not take into account the specific needs of women entrepreneurs and would-be women entrepreneurs. Consequently, equal opportunity between men and women from the perspective of entrepreneurship is still not a reality. Women entrepreneurs are defined as those who use their knowledge, skills and resources to develop or create new business opportunities. Women entrepreneurs - whether they may be informally in a home environment without formally registering their business or formally byregistering the business, hiring office premises, etc. - who are actively involved in managing their businesses, are responsible in some way for the day-to-day running of the business, and have been in operation for longer than a year. The essence of women entrepreneurs are the ‘willingness to assume risk’ arising out of the creation and implementation of new ideas. New ideas are always tentative and their results may not be instantaneous and positive. An entrepreneur has to have patience to see her efforts bear fruit. In the intervening period (time gap between the conception and implementation of an idea and its results), an entrepreneur has to assume risks. If a woman does not have the willingness to assume risk, entrepreneurship would never succeed. The women, who venture entrepreneurship, played a commanding role within the family by controlling resources, making crucial planting and harvesting decisions, and determining the expenses and budget allocations. Educated women entrepreneurs are seen in higher-status positions in the society and in the private service sectors too. However, within the family, an educated entrepreneur did not necessarily hold a higher status than her uneducated counterpart. Also within the family, a woman's status, especially a daughter-in-law's status, was more closely tied to her husband's authority and to her parental family's wealth and status than anything. Hence, woman’s entrepreneurship is both about women’s position in society and the role of entrepreneurship in the same society. Women are faced with the obstacles of family responsibilities. These obstacles should have to be overcome in order to give them access to the same opportunities as men. Their standing in society is mostly contingent on their husbands' and parents' social and economic positions. Since, the social milieu restricts women’s role within the household, they are mostly involved in home base industries such as food processing, garments hosiery, crafts, etc. However; these industries are in the crisis due to open competitions from imported products or being replaced by organized formal units. Other constraints are also very significant to accelerate the crisis. This study reveals that women-owned businesses are no more likely to fail than men-owned. It has been reported that women perform less well on quantitative measures such as job creation, sales turnover and profitability since women do not enter business for financial gain but to pursue intrinsic goals for example, independence, and the flexibility to run business and domestic lives. Implicitly, women are deemed to assess success in relation to their achievement in attaining personal goals, i.e., self- fulfillment, goal attainment, etc. The findings of this study have indicated that women who were into their own enterprising activities had become empowered as they were able to contribute monthly to household income, a thing they were previously unable to do. In this respect, women entrepreneurship development programs are strongly recommended because women entrepreneurs will not only benefit to their households but to the national economy as well. This is because women are more likely to use their income for the benefit of the family than men.