Do Women Still have A Medieval Mindset towards Themselves? A study on the Impact of Decision Making Index in Empowering Woman Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Empowerment of women entrepreneurs in India is gaining importance during the past years. But we need to study if women still have a medieval mindset. This can be found by the decision making empowerment index which shows the attitude of the women about their decision making ability. It is assumed that women with medieval mindset believe that they should not be involved in major household decision making and a good wife listens to every decision and follows what the husband demands. Hence we see that decision making is the key to empowerment. The research philosophy underpinning this study was objectivist ontology and positivist epistemology positions. A descriptive research design, empirical and quantitative research approach was followed. 130 women entrepreneurs from 4 States in South India were interviewed using convenience sampling technique. Decision making empowerment index were calculated. Based on the result in ANOVA, it was found that there was a significant difference among the four groups of respondents regarding their empowerment index. The analysis further shows that decision making empowerment index was moderate. The research provides insights on how to improve the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.