Rural Women in Group Enterprises

Abstract

Group entrepreneurship offers an effective development strategy for harnessing rich rural resources into large number of income generating opportunities. A pragmatic view is that the group venture provides the poorest and most marginalized people who cannot start the venture individually with the opportunities to earn an income. While individual entrepreneurship is guided by profits largely depends for its success on the competence of individuals, success of group entrepreneurship depends to a large extent on the effective support of support agency in the form of supply of raw materials, selection of machinery, procurement of orders and quality control etc. The purpose of this research paper was to increase the understanding about women who are running group businesses, with the emphasis on “understanding” their experiences. The researchers have made an attempt to have better qualitative information and quantitative data and statistics to profile women engaged in group ventures (demographic information, benefits and sustainability). This would also assist in promoting awareness of the role of group entrepreneurship in the economy. The study has found that group enterprises promoted by SIRI have provided opportunities for the young rural girls, after their school education, to generate income and become financially independent. The young girls’ earnings from the group business are very important and contributed to the improvement in the quality of life of poor rural families. Women entering SIRI’s group enterprises are in the age group of 17-25 indicating that it is mostly unmarried women who do not have household and reproductive responsibilities that generally place severe constraints on developing business. Our research shows that SIRI offers a range of services to address the various constraints faced by women entrepreneurs and the sample respondents are quite happy with its support structure. From our research it is evident that women’s group enterprises need handholding support of support agencies for their start up, growth and sustainability since the poor and less educated rural women do not have basic competence to successfully manage a business.