factors enabling women to break glass ceiling & emerge as...

Factors Enabling Women to Break Glass Ceiling &

Emerge as Entrepreneurs in Hospitality Industry

Author: Dr. Harkirat Bains

Professor

SOTHSM (TC)

Regional centre

IGNOU

Bhopal, MP

Mob No. - 9669065923

e-mail id: [email protected]

Author: Ms. Shilpi Bhatia

Lecturer

Dr. Ambedkar IHM

Sector-42-D

Chandigarh-160036

Mob No. - 9780219651

e-mail id: [email protected]

ADALYA JOURNAL

Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2020

ISSN NO: 1301-2746

http://adalyajournal.com/105

Factors Enabling Women to Break Glass Ceiling &

Emerge as Entrepreneurs in Hospitality Industry

Abstract: Entrepreneurship has provided wide avenues to men and women earlier it was

considered men’s domain now women have also entered into entrepreneurship in

hospitality industry and creating their own niche in the society. Among them the reason of

becoming entrepreneurs are the various factors which are influencing them to take this

opportunity as their career and achieve their goals. The main purpose of this research is

to investigate the different factors that influence entrepreneurial behaviours among women

working in Chandigarh-Tri-city, (Chandigarh, Mohali & Panchkula) India and to highlight

them how they are influencing them to take up entrepreneurship as their professional choice.

Keywords: Women, Entrepreneurial factors, Hospitality Industry, Gender role,

Independency

INTRODUCTION

Economy growth and development of the country is determined by human, physical

and financial resources. The intent of any planned development is to develop human resource

to their brimming utilization. Any country‘s economic growth can only move to higher level

of growth either by attaining a larger quantum of the factors of production or through

technical progress by means of competent human resources. Efficient human resources are

always an asset for any country’s development. They can create employment or work as an

employee for the development of nation. It has been observed that an entrepreneurship has

been highlighted as a crucial way to reduce unemployment and improve the economic

situations. It is the actual process of starting a new business as well as the study of how new

businesses are created-the term is used interchangeably.

The credence in market-driven ideology and the postulation that novel commerce

enterprises construct jobs and foster innovation has ingrained entrepreneurship into political

discourse across the world. The underlying idea is that if entrepreneurship is coupled with

sustainable technological, social, and cultural advances, there are significant societal and

economic benefits to be gained. However, gender stereotypes about entrepreneurs have

profound implications for men and women interested in entrepreneurship. A prominent

stream of entrepreneurship research centres around the concept of occupational sex-role

stereotyping with the goal of better understanding shared beliefs about the gender

characterizations ascribed to entrepreneurs. Evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is male-

typed (Sullivan and Meek 2012), such that entrepreneurs are usually described in masculine

terms and feminine qualities are considered antithetical to an entrepreneur (Ahl 2006;

Thébaud 2010). Therefore, women are circumventing to take up entrepreneurship as a career

and those who are there they seem to be under-represented. With the industrial revolution it

has provided a great thrust to women entrepreneurs. The Industrial Revolution in the western

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world took place more than two centuries ago and provided greater impetus and prospects to

women entrepreneurs. Whereas in India, though the development of industries took place at a

rapid pace but the extension of facilities for development of women entrepreneurs are mostly

a post-independence phenomenon and, that too, only from the 1970's onwards.

Women Entrepreneurs: By referring to studies conducted in the Northern countries, we

could foresee that the concept of women entrepreneurship had undergone several definitions.

Lavoie (1988, p.3) considers a woman entrepreneur is the one who is a business owner and

leader, a business executive or woman manager.

Now, in the present scenerion studies on women says that women are not oppressed

but rather dynamic individuals who can choose the nature of their entrepreneurial activities

and overcome obstacles that they may encounter. Their creative potential is observed as a

hidden source of economic growth and new jobs which encouraged them to emerge in this

profession.

In privileging the voice of women doing ―individualized entrepreneurial femininity,‖

an individualistic, neo-liberal “everybody is capable” view of entrepreneurship is cast.

Individualized entrepreneurial femininity ―emphasizes the gender neutrality and meritocracy

of the world of entrepreneurship ‘‘ and asserts that “doing business basically requires the

ability to abide by universal standards of good business practice”. Women are generally

making it when opportunities are made available to them, other women can also overcome

barriers if they too try hard enough. The onus is on young women to use role models

successfully to correct their “deficits”‘-a sort of “fix the women” approach.

Women Entrepreneurs & Hospitality Industry: The contribution of entrepreneurs in

tourism and hospitality industry is a key for economic growth. Furthermore, the role of

women in the economy has been growing in importance for many years and women

entrepreneurs have become significant economic forces. However, in tourism generally,

relatively little attention has been paid to the role of women entrepreneurial activity and in

particular, to how tourism and hospitality enterprises operated by women in different

countries. In hospitality industry the contribution of women in entrepreneurship is there but is

less as compared to men however, entrepreneurship has provided them a platform to live their

dreams and create their niche in the society. However, while fulfilling their dreams they need

to face lots of challenges which are restricting them to excel in this profession. In many

countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD), the number of women entrepreneurs is rising. According to the survey conducted by

the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ventures owned by women

now make up one-quarter to one-third of the total commerce population worldwide. They are

likely to become even more important to the economy in the future. They are thriving as

interior home or office decorators, garment manufacturers, jewellery or furniture designers,

material exporters, publishers, food service providers and many more and apart from this they

are still exploring new avenues of economic participation. It has provided a wide range of

income generation opportunities to women in both formal and informal employment which

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can be carried out from various locations such as the workplace or home. Tourism industry

has played a significant role in empowering women and making them economically

independent.

Review of Literature

Indian society depicts a bleak picture of organizational life for a (female) employee

where limited options for advancement and difficulty in conforming to work hours (due to

child care obligations ) are presented as individual problems as opposed to family,

organizational (or societal) ones and women are left no choice but to forge their own way.

But, Entrepreneurship is positioned as an opportunity to “bounce back” from a gendered-and

sometimes age and race/ethnicity based-personal situation or difficulty. It is also presented as

a win-win strategy for the individual to reconcile potential conflict of the home and work life

spheres. The women‘s talk of why they engaged in entrepreneurship reveals the starkly

gendered nature of work, where the ‗‘glass ceiling‘‘ and the ‗‘maternal wall‘‘ are presented

as standard triggers for women‘s engagement in business creation. It has really become an

empowerment tool for women; it has channelled them from smaller to larger businesses.

Now, these days they are not only confined to home based business with low growth

opportunities but have also emerged into service sector based opportunities (Calas, Smircich,

and Bourne 2009). Although, the number of women entrepreneurs has risen in recent years,

much of this growth has been in part-time activity-mainly due to women‘s need for hours that

are compatible with domestic commitments (Causer and Park 2009).

Their discourse often cast entrepreneurial entry as an appropriate alternative for working

mothers (Thebaud 2015). Participants talked of having ‗flexibility‘‘ to manage family and

childcare responsibilities, as result many of them get engaged in low growth or “home-based”

service businesses. Furthermore, it is stated that the home based entrepreneurship offers

women the flexibility to combine domestic demands and economic participation (Marlow

2014). When entrepreneurs work predominantly from home, this can lead them to take up an

even greater share of domestic work in their household division of labour that is often already

gendered (Gurley-Calves, Biehl, and Harper 2009). Embedding the work space in the

domestic environment may remove traditional physical and temporal barriers so the business

becomes a constant and demanding presence, thereby may increase women‘s experience of

work family conflict (Martinez Dy, Marlow, and Martin 2016) as they are also expected to

perform their gender roles.

It is generally stated that more women entrepreneurs are needed in the society as their

number is very less as compared to men however, those women who are already in

entrepreneurship are seem to be under-represented. Policy interest in women‘s

entrepreneurship has grown, focusing on the potential economic gains that could accrue from

their increased rates of participation and productivity (carter et al. 2015). With their increased

rate of participation this also demands economic equality irrespective of gender. This

escalation of economic arguments for gender equality in recent years means that a market-

oriented gender equality discourse underpins gender equality policy (EI€omaki 2015): gender

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equality contributes to economic growth. Un-deniably, it has been noticed that the ―global

gender gap‘‘ generally indicates most of the policy interest in women‘s enterprises being run

by the women of our country. It has been clearly identified by them that an economic

motivation is the underlying principle for the support of women to take up entrepreneurship

and become independent business owners (Carter Et al. 2015) and become able to take their

responsibility as well of their family.

These women are becoming entrepreneurial role models for young women, as they

represent potential role models to observe and emulate. Prior research in the management

field has shown how women‘s presence in positions of power positively affects both the

social construction of gender definition and the processes that create gender identify at work

(Ely 1994). If a suitable ―similar‖ role model is identified, young women may be inspired to

emulate those attributes, resulting in the behavioural change (Sealy and Singh 2009). For

example, a young management trainee in a large multinational revealed how ―an unmarried,

childless woman‖ in her workplace could not be her role model (a suitable comparison), as

she personally wanted to have a family in the future (Eriksson-Zetterquist 2008). But, having

same-sex role models is important, young women face an additional difficulty in

entrepreneurship. They often have to act to ―smooth out‖ potential inconsistencies between

the characteristics of their female role models and those of the ―normative entrepreneur‖

(Kelan and Mah 2014), making their female role-modelling process a more complex one.

Women must strive to position themselves as unconstrained by external controls and become

an inspiration for other young women who are aspiring to become entrepreneur.

Factors Influencing Women Entrepreneurs:

Women Entrepreneurs in India embody a dynamic cluster of working women who all have

broken away from the beaten track where demands at home, family oppositions & cultural

inhibitions have led to lack of support, resources and prospects; are now exploring new views

of economic participations with an all new vigour. A great many of them have chosen to

entrepreneurship because of compelling urge to do something positive. It acts as the pace

setters for women in their pursuit for financial autonomy. These are various factors which are

promoting women to take up entrepreneurship as a career and to go out on their own, rather

than staying employed.

1. Individual motivation: Motivation showed a strong relationship to performance.

Entrepreneurial women generally have an inbuilt quality and a strong desire to do

something positive and be capable to contribute values in both family and social life.

The potential and the determination to set-up, uphold and supervise their own

enterprise in a systematic manner. An appropriate support and encouragement from

the society, family and government will help them to become a part of mainstream of

national economy which will ultimately led their contributions towards the economic

progress of the country.

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2. Human Capital: Analysis of human capital variables includes the level of education

and the business skill which women ought to have to pursue their career in

entrepreneurship. Education related to eentrepreneurship encourages women to take

up entrepreneurship as their career alternative. Providing suitable education to them

helps them to identify sources of novel ideas and transfer these ideas into new ventures.

As, education is muse for women to achieve financial independence. Statistics

indicate that only one girl out of 100 reaches grade 12, in India. As more women

begin to learn and earn, they need to further invest in girls‖ education for a better,

more responsible world.

3. Self-Confidence: To venture on to a new beginning, what a person needs most is self-

confidence. Most of the respondents mentioned that they get inspired or influenced by

the people they meet, or the stories they read about other successful people, but

nothing pushes them forward like the voice that comes from within, but ultimately,

they have to work bottom up with a strong vision. They believe each one of them

needs to probe within. Everybody is capable it’s the confidence that decides the path

ahead. Although, being a women entrepreneur in India, they have had to face the glass

ceiling along the way and they need to have the confidence to pass those hurdles and

carve their own niche.

4. Self-leadership: Women having self leadership quality have the capability to drive

themselves in an effective way and able to take decision on their own. It is a self-

influencing process that enhances their self-provocation and self-direction

capabilities. It specifies a collection of intra-individual strategies that provide explicit

behavioural and cognitive prescriptions that can be used to achieve greater personal

effectiveness. Broadly, extant research indicates that self- leadership strategies

positively influence performance. For example, a field study by Neck and Manz

(1996) demonstrated the effectiveness of self- leadership training, which resulted in

improved job satisfaction, enthusiasm, and mental performance. Hence, those women

who have inbuilt quality of leadership would result to perform much better than

others.

5. Environmental Influences: Furthermore, given that entrepreneurial activity is

strongly influenced by an environment. Environmental influence includes variables

such as location, sectoral participation, and socio-political and socio-cultural

variables. Furthermore, given that entrepreneurial activity is strongly influenced by

socio-cultural forces that shape the entrepreneurial image.

Women are confronted with higher perceptual barriers, young women are

embedded in a context with deeply engrained gender stereotypes and a masculine

construction of entrepreneurship, and this prevents them from viewing

entrepreneurship as an attractive and feasible career option. Though by some of the

entrepreneurial role models, entrepreneurship is depicted as an empowering way for

women to make their own rules (individual action), responding positively to

unfavourable forces beyond their control (―bounce back‖ reaction). In this way, it

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enables them to manage their own time and family lives (flexibility) while being

creative and free (autonomy). However, the balancing of work and family is generally

presented as a women‘s problem; since work and family integration are concerns that

are seldom raised in discussion of male entrepreneurs.

6. New Femininity: The women‘s narratives portray entrepreneurial women as

―entrepreneurial superwomen‖- who are empowered, enjoying work/life, doing good

in the world, overcoming all obstacles, embodying highly gendered and classes norms

of entrepreneurial success. This entrepreneurial superwoman identity aligns with

hegemonic individualized entrepreneurial feminity—active, dynamic and

individualistic women entrepreneurs who often deny obstacles arising from gender.

The entrepreneurial superwomen feminine identity also echoes the new feminity

(ideal, or perfect, feminity) discourse which pervades contemporary society, impelling

women to seek perfection as well as embrace individualism. Women are more

inclined to find out their own identity in the society and become independent, their

approach towards new feminity has encouraged them to join entrepreneurship and

achieve their goal.

7. Household Welfare: Women have been the pillars of their family since time

immemorial. They are shouldering multiple responsibilities and juggling family life

along with their careers. By promoting women entrepreneurship it contributes to

socio-economic development of countries. In developing countries (especially) with

the increase in the rate of women entrepreneurship, it has created a optimistic impact

on overall household welfare and utilization. Women‘s unique function in the

household builts a network upshot resulting in improved entrepreneurial activities.

Entrepreneurship offers economic security to women and their family provides them a

platform for self-expression and fulfilment and empowers them as individuals to

uplift their family and their social status. It has emerged as an venerable platform for

them.

8. Personal Development: The main reasons for women to come in entrepreneurship

are their high ambitions of growth and development. The same thing has also been

supported by the research conducted by Cox business. It has been observed that they

want to achieve their dreams and make their own existence in the society. Women

entrepreneurs have been designed as the new engines for growth and a rising stars of

the economies in developing countries to bring prosperity and welfare.

Entrepreneurship acts as a vehicle for personal development or for solving social

problems.

9. Societal Development: Some of the women entrepreneurs mentioned that their

objective is not to make profit per se, but to achieve social good through the process

of identifying opportunities, exercising creativity and building new services. So, that

those people who are not able to afford or able to manage to get services they can be

helped to avail the services such as one of the respondents mentioned that she

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provides accommodation service along with basic food facility to girls at affordable

rates so that it can easily meet their expenses. According to them lending help to

unprivelidged people helps them to bring happiness in their lives as well as to other

people’s life also. For them social entrepreneurship is an important aspect of

entrepreneurship.

10. Financial Independency: One can gain the power of control fundamentally through

the freedom of decision-making, and consequently by being confident enough to

claim one‘s right. But the most important thing is that all of this power generates from

becoming economically independent. Like it has been said by Mahalia Jackson ―it is

easy to be independent when you have got money. But not to be dependent upon

others and survive on its own even in dreadful condition- that is the Lord‘s test‖.

Financial independence is one solution that can kill many viruses troubling Indian

women in various walks of life and entrepreneurship provides them an opportunity to

earn money. Facilitation of financial independence and decision making gives women

power to transform themselves into leaders and entrepreneurs. Women can then

provide jobs, be mentors and role models for other budding leaders also. It provides

women the benefits of decision making, since they choose to live by their terms, make

mistakes and learn from them. As earners and spenders, it gives women the power to

be active problem solvers and community builders.

11. Unmet market needs: One common path to success for many small businesses is to

find niche market (targetable portion of market or narrowly defined group of potential

customers) and establish a principal position as a participant in that alcove. At any

point of time no large retailer can become everything for all people as their demand

keeps on changing. Therefore, there will always be a segment of the population whose

needs for a particular product or services are unmet that space is going to be the space

where a small enterprise can penetrate a market. Their small businesses capitalize on

unmet needs and find and dominate a niche market. They can offer a unique Product

or Services to the unmet needs of their customers. If they will come up with all kind

of creative and original products and/or services, one wants what they have produced,

will help them to earn their livelyhood. Additionally, although they are targeting a

niche market, if there is a sufficient demand for their product for them it could also

lead them to make a great profit out of it. To determine demand, they gauge their

market and conduct extensive market research this is the best way to find out and to

reach out their target market.

12. Willingness to take Risk: Encountering a fear can make it easy to quickly rationalize

walking away from a great idea. To be successful, it is important to take a risk and be

willing to see what the consequences of taken decisions are. Because, consequences

are teachers and guides, they give us quick answers. They mentioned that if they will

never take any risk, they will never light up signposts to direct themselves and their

business in the right direction. They view each ―no‖ as a prompt for a new direction

or opportunity. During the time of research one of the respondents said that ―Commit

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to letting fear be your motivator but don‘t let it become your captor when you

approach career aspirations.‖

13. Self-fulfilment: Some of the entrepreneurs mentioned entrepreneurship is about self-

fulfilment. Extending from their talk of values and personal fulfilment, many women

talked of entrepreneurship being about, making of difference. They wanted to do

something useful and worthwhile and talked of their need to have professional life

which ―held meaning‖. This meaning was often linked to personal value and

aspiration for their better world. Entrepreneurs are trying to provide services to the

people of world even on a small scale. With entrepreneurship, it is possible to change

the world, just by doing small things. Women entrepreneurs are trying their best to

add another feather in the cap and ―playing their part‖ to add stone to the pile‖. The

women outlined that how helping others or bringing other‘s happiness resulted in their

own personal satisfaction. One of the respondents mentioned the pleasure of seeing

satisfied customer: ―the smile on their faces is their biggest pride‖.

14. Autonomy: These days women want to be their own boss, they want to have freedom

and would like to work as they wish to. Many of women evoked entrepreneurship as

an activity which allowed them to ―be free‖. The autonomy and their need of

independence and freedom allowed women to take entrepreneurship as a career. This

freedom is multifaceted refers to autonomy in one‘s professional life: enabling them

to choose as they took the plunge to do ―what they wanted to do, the way they wanted

to do and with whom‖. It has enabled them to express their creativity and pursue their

own ideas. It has provided them independence, this autonomy is also about freedom

from hierarchy: an opportunity to express their innovative ideas and creativity,

something that some women claim they were not authorised to do in previous position

or in company in which they were working earlier.

15. Suppleness in Managing Familial Responsibility: Entrepreneurship allowed them

the flexibility to manage both (personal and professional). When they recount how

they were totally fulfilled in their previous job but they still construct the tension in

managing their family responsibilities, as “normality”. Entrepreneurship has granted

freedom in the women‘s personal lives and allowed them to manage their time as they

want (flexibility). Being an entrepreneur became the obvious choice: freedom to act;

freedom to think and the freedom to manage time.‖ It is positioned as a win-win

strategy for women to reconcile potential conflict between work and home.

16. Encouragement from peer-to-peer platform: Peer-to-peer platforms work great in

encouraging women entrepreneurship. It gives people an opportunity to not only

learns from each other but also to network with peers. Quite often businesses can be

cut throat and extremely competitive. So to find a forum where people are genuinely

interested in seeing you succeed is a great thing.

Being a part of peer-to-peer platforms like ASCENT Foundation is a much

needed reprieve for women as it means getting first-hand experience from experts

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facing similar situations and therefore helps in avoiding similar mistakes. These

platforms facilitate conversations amongst likeminded entrepreneur and for many

women that it in itself is extremely helpful. These platforms also serve as great

learning opportunities not just for women entrepreneurs but to all entrepreneurs.

17. Network Affiliation: Those women who have wide contacts and membership of

different organisations, it helps them to carve their niche in the society such as in

India Federation of Indian Women Entrepreneurs (FIWE), a National-level

organisation, one of India‘s premier Institution for women thoroughly devoted

towards entrepreneurship development in the country (FIWE), endeavours to provide:

Networking platform for women, Technical knowledge, expertise related to industry

research, enhancing skills through training and provides the businesswomen a

common forum and to ensures that their visions, outlooks and ideas are taken so that

all those can be presented to the policy makers and various other agencies

respectively and some positive changes can be incorporated in the direction of the

development of women entrepreneurship.

SUGGESTIONS

There are certain suggestions which a researcher has put forward which will help women

entrepreneurs to impove their present situation of entrepreneurship in the society by adhering

them.

1. Business Model: To begin with their own business, women should work towards

developing a strong foundation and emphasis must be made on the business model.

Before starting, women must make cognisant endeavours in understanding their

sector, must take essential steps to have complete knowledge about the industry, their

competitors and the fiscal administration. More often women don't take these basics

seriously. As result they need to face lots of obstacles later on which increases the risk

of business failure also.

2. Organisational Structure: Another big mistake many women entrepreneurs make is

to assume that there is no need for an ‗organisational structure‘. In the earlier times no

attention was paid toward it but now it is an important factor to lay the foundation and

set a process for your business. A well planned structure makes the communication

flow smoother and the decision making time shorter.

3. Rapidly Changes: ‗Entrepreneurship is critical to the hospitality, leisure, sports and

tourism sectors. It is a driver of changes, innovation and employment in this industry

is very essential, with rapidly changing consumer demands and expectations, constant

innovation by business is vital to meet and hopefully exceed these evolving demands

and expectations and it is very crucial to meet the rapidly changing demands of

hospitality, leisure, sports and tourism consumers only than they can keep their

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existence in the market. Hence, it is very much essential to keep on inculcating

changes as per the requirements of the guests and consumers.

4. Innovation: Many women are deterred by the concept of the need for innovation.

While innovation is definitely an important factor. To keep their business in existence

and in the smooth running position it is very essential for them to keep themselves

updated with the new demands and requirements of the customers as it gets changed

with the passage of time. Through innovations and new product developments it will

help them to fulfil customers desirs and remain associated with them.

5. Improve Environment: It is imperative that we address the several misconceptions

around entrepreneurship. Now, it is no more longer a men domain profession women

are also contributing a lot towards it. Society and government should take proper steps

towards their development and upliftment. Government should develop a proper road

map for policy makers to improve the environment for developing women

entrepreneurship. Discrimination on the basis of gender needs to be eliminated and

equal weightage needs to be given to women as to men. Only, then the situation of

women entrepreneurs will get improve in the society

6. Gender approach: The gender approach is defined by B‘chir et al (2008) as follows:

―The ―gender approach‖ leads to consider the different opportunities available for

men and women, the roles socially assigned to them and the relationships between

them. The lack of gender approach among Indian society can be explained by the fact

that Indian women entrepreneurs are the victim of discrimination and stereotypes in

the entrepreneurial process. Gender is closely related to all aspects of the individual‘s

daily and private economic and social life as well as to those of the society which

assigns to each of them (men and women) specific roles.‖ It is thought to be an

important variable that can enhance women‘s entrepreneurship success through the

elimination of bias and discrimination sources. Efforts need to be made by the family

and the government to facilitate women‘s access to entrepreneurship. Society and

Government needs to extend special support to women towards their education,

training and development and financee and also government needs to extend help to

them towards their child care responsibility because generally it is considered their

duty to take care of them. If help will be extended to them only then they will find it

convinent to manage their professional and personal domains.

7. Bricolage: Bricolage means as ―making do by applying combinations of resources at

hand to new problems and opportunities‖. It suggest that bricolage may be a valuable

enabler of entrepreneurship and innovation in resources-constrained environments.

With increasing empowerment higher levels of bricolage allow for flexibility in the

interpretation, access, and recombination of resources to improve performance.

8. Psychological capital: Psychological capital may be described as ―having full

confidence (self-efficacy) to attain success in the challenging tasks by putting the

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necessary endeavours; making a positive ascription (optimism) about succeeding now

and in the future; unrelenting toward goals and, whenever necessary, redirect paths to

goals (hope) so that the victory can be accomplished; and when inundated by troubles

harsh conditions, surviving and coming back and even beyond (resiliency) to

accomplish victory‖. Psychological capital is believed to be important in the

entrepreneurial process and is integral to empowerment in the attainment of

entrepreneurial outcomes.

9. Internet: Increasingly, the internet is becoming a universal medium for the

communication of government ―texts‖. It is a relatively easy medium to maintain,

ensuring upto-date information, and suffering minimal temporal distortion. Those

women who have certain constraints regarding taking entrepreneurship as a career

they can also enter into this profession with the help of an internet they can run their

businesses while setting at home. They can design their own website sharing complete

photos of their venture, their job title and services provided by them to their

customers, they can also create their social accounts on the social networking sites

(Facebook, Pintrust, LinkdIn etc.) where they can have dedicated ―posts‖ of their

entrepreneurship which can be followed or reviewed by other people. Their account

on social sites and an account of their entrepreneurial experience can become an

advice for young women.

10. Inner potential and Strenghts: One thing where women entrepreneurs need to bring

change in them is to identify their own intrinsic potential. Still in the society there are

number of women who do not have the confidence to have faith on themselves that

they have the capability to be leaders. If they realise this thing they can performe far

better than they are performing at present. And, in the last they need to leverage their

strengths and for this they need to adhere certain factors such as passion,

commitment, risk taking abilities, and quick decision all these are quite vital factors as

they play an important role for the success and smooth running of any start-up or

venture. As, women have a better flair than men while interacting with people which

also in turn helps them to excel as better leaders.

CONCLUSION

Numerous nationwide events, competitions, and campaigns over the last decade have

provided a platform for women entrepreneurs, providing a promising source of ―symbolic‖

role models for young Indian women. Women entrepreneurs can act as symbolic role models

and mentors, setting examples and providing valuable lessons for aspiring women

entrepreneurs. However, while women entrepreneur role models have increased in number

and visibility in recent years, this has not impacted the number of women choosing to become

entrepreneurs. Indian government should provide them a support to increase the number of

women entrepreneurs in society. With the increase in the number of women entrepreneurs the

promotion of role models is considered imperative. We found that the role model

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entrepreneurs‘ narratives consistently evoke an image of a heroic superwoman who appears

to ―do it all,‖ and is successful in both professional and private domains. The idea that a

successful business woman might inspire a keen (already engaged and prepared) female

entrepreneur makes perfect sense; however, high-powered (and privileged) role models

cannot be expected to automatically affect the entrepreneurial intentions among women more

generally. The demographic profile of this group of entrepreneurial role models means that

disadvantaged groups (ethnic minorities; lower socio-economic classes) may have difficulty

in identifying with the proposed role models.

The women entrepreneurial role models emphasize their nurturing, caring, and

collaborative behaviours. These women entrepreneurs are concerned with the welfare of

others. They exhibit kindness, sympathy, compassion, and sensitivity, traits which are

typically considered as feminine and communal hence ―gender appropriate‖. Helping others,

accepting others‘ direction, and maintaining relationships are part of their entrepreneurial

identity. Being ―too‖ caring or ―trusting‖ is not well perceived and showing vulnerability is a

weakness. Indeed, women who display an excessive femininity (―non-preneurs‖) within a

business context will be sanctioned and might have to leave the entrepreneurship realm. In

the entrepreneurial domain women entrepreneurs generally reveal more agentic behaviour as

need to handle the business simultaneously the entrepreneurial role models take care to

temper their accounts with reference to their roles as mothers or as responsible citizens, hence

exhibiting expected communal behaviours and abating negative reactions. For example, many

women entrepreneurs referred to their proven competence, expertise or personal success—

thus aligning themselves as ―agentic‖ business people—but they then also took care to

mention the pleasure and satisfaction that their success triggered for their families.

Entrepreneurship can constitute a real positive force in one‘s life; however this may

come at a price. Indeed the ―pleasure and enjoyment‖ and ―doing good‖ that one derives from

the all-consuming ―fulfilling‖ job of the entrepreneur does have negative implications. Long

hours, low pay, stress, and physical exhaustion were evoked. Is the amount of pleasure one

derives from entrepreneurship really off-set by the long hours and precarious financial

situations in which young women find themselves as they struggle to make up for their lack

of social capital or management experience. In sum, there is little acknowledgment of the

limited earnings potential of the resulting new venture and associated opportunity cost of

leaving secure, paid employment, next is the taken for granted assumption that women

continue to fulfil private roles on top of their professional ones, and last but not the least the

failings of the salaried system to provide sufficient work flexibility to allow for child friendly

work hours. Their discourse fails to challenge inequality by normalizing workplace gender

norms.

Despite promoting gender equality still it shows that Indian society has room for

improvement with respect to women‘s economic participation, opportunity and political

empowerment. There are number of women who are more qualified than men still there is a

relatively low number of women who manage to break the ―glass ceiling‖—the so called set

of barriers created by prejudices of behavioural or organizational order which prevent

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qualified individuals from moving forward in their organization. Indian government need to

take some steps to upgrade and stabilize the position of women in the entrepreneurship trend

and foster female career advancement and promotion of women especially into top

management positions. Policy interest in women‘s entrepreneurship must grow as the

participation of women in entrepreneurship will accrue the potential of economic gains. They

should take steps to encourage entrepreneurship among women. The action plan should aims

to facilitate new business creation—through entrepreneurial education and efforts to nurture

an entrepreneurial culture irrespective of gender discrimination—and to create a much more

supportive environment for existing entrepreneurs, free of burdensome administrative

barriers. To conclude, we can say that the environmental factors (access to funding and to

network as well as the gender approach) have a greater impact on women‘s entrepreneurship

success. Now, it has been understood that the encouragement of entrepreneurship is not only

necessary for a healthy financial system but also essential for sustaining opulence and

generating new jobs‘. The heightened interest in entrepreneurship has been as a consequence

of a diverse range of contributory factors including the belief that it can act as a recipe for

financial prosperity and can also reduce unemployment.

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