Women Empowerment and Entrepreneurship: Some Issues

Abstract

The paper begins with a broad assessment of the current status of empowerment of women across the world
with particular reference to India, discusses the meaning, forms and levels of empowerment and points to
the significance of gender equality as a stepping stone toward women empowerment. While attempting to
examine the role of entrepreneurship in acting as a means to empowerment, the paper refers to the three
contrasting paradigms in this context. First of these three paradigms underlined in the paper is the concept
of financial self-sustainability based on the neo-liberal philosophy of market growth aimed at economic
empowerment via expansion of individual choices and capacities for self reliance, the second is the concept
based on interventionist poverty alleviation and community development approach relying on group
formation by women etc., and the third approach is based on a structuralist, socialist and feminist critique of
capitalism (Mayoux 2000, Johnson 1997), which views entrepreneurship as a point of entry for women’s
socio-economic empowerment, entailing transformation of power relations throughout society. The paper
then indicates how social structures and norms, by defining and constraining the space for women to
exercise freedom in various aspects of life, pose obstacles on the way to empowerment..The paper concludes
that while entrepreneurship can play a significant role in achieving the goal of empowerment of women,
one needs to address the issues arising out of constraining social norms and market forces etc., so as to be
able to achieve this avowed goal.