Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurship:The Way Ahead

Abstract

Women have always been considered to play an important part in the growth and development process. Promoting gender equality and economic empowerment of women is recognized as one of the important aspects of the Millennium Development Goals. The Sustainable Developmental goals too emphasize the importance of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. However, the reality is that women have often been denied equal position and status in society. Their growth prospects have been stunted either due to cultural or socio-economic factors. Women today constitute 50% of the total population and in India alone women perform 66% of the world's work, and produce 50% of the food. But sadly women today not only lack access to finance, market, infrastructure and social service, technology etc. as compared to their male counterparts but they also face various socio-economic and other problems as they are not treated at par with men. The stakes are high and the challenges that lie ahead are enormous, but with the support of the Government as well as the various institutions, transformation can take place. Empowering women through development of entrepreneurship has been considered as an important mechanism for the overall inclusive growth of the economy. It will lead to not only the economic empowerment of women but also to the cognitive, political and psychological empowerment. This would then translate into a rippling effect as it would improve both the status of women and also provide them with the necessary income required for their sustenance. In this paper an attempt has been made to analyze the concept of women empowerment, the methods used to measure it, the logical reasoning to establish whether there exists a correlation between women empowerment and the benefits that accrue from it.