Women in Entrepreneurship: Issues of Motivation and Choice of Business

Abstract

Though entrepreneurship is old, women entrepreneurship is a recent phenomenon in India. This study has been undertaken to explore the motivational factors and different reasons for choosing particular businesstypes by women entrepreneurs from the perspectives of different socio-demographic dimensions of women entrepreneurial life. It has been an intensive micro-level field study of women entrepreneurs from the perspectives of thriving, evolving and prospering small urban India in this millennium beyond the peripherals of metropolis. The methodology of the study was based on the primary data collected through direct interviews with women entrepreneurs by using an interview schedule with structured questionnaire. The study revealed that the most important motivating factors for women entrepreneurs were to help their husband and family in sharing family burden, followed by self-motivation. Though age group, educational level, training status and marital status have been found to be associated with motivational aspects of women entrepreneurs, family type has no bearing on business-motivation. Again, women entrepreneurs have chosen particular type of businesses for different reasons. The most important reason was the needs of the locality, low capital requirement and ready market-availability of the products and services, followed by interest, training and emerging market for the product/services. Except family type, age group, educational level, training status and marital status have been related significantly with choice of business-types. The middle-aged, graduate and trained women entrepreneurs have been the most opportunistic lot of entrepreneurs.