Impact of Role Models on Entrepreneurial Intention of Women Students: A Case for Women Empowerment Through Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been proved to be an effective tool for empowerment. There are many studies, which show entrepreneurship as great way to empower women across many countries, including both developing and developed countries. Entrepreneurship paves the paths for development and is important for any country’s progress and development. There are very few countries (only seven, according to certain source) where ratio of female entrepreneur is almost equal to their male counterparts. And in most of the countries the ratio of women entrepreneur is very poor. There are many researches which explores role the entrepreneurship in women empowerment. Theory of planned behavior (TPB) is applied as our model to predict relationship between entrepreneurial-intention and the mediating variable attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and role models. The research shall use entrepreneurial intention scale developed by Linan and Chen (2009). This instrument contains three dimensions attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Fourth dimension Role Model is adopted and developed from various researches to suit the requirement of the study. The research demonstrate the attitude of women students toward entrepreneurship and their likeliness of starting a venture. There are many factors which determine the level of entrepreneurial activities in a country. The main factors explored in past researches, apart from demographics, includes personality status, economic status and social status etc. Present study will explore four factors: Attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and Role model.In India there are very few researches, which explore the entrepreneurial intention from behavioral intention perspective. This research shall be one-step further towards understanding entrepreneurship from behavioral aspect.