Challenges in the Life of Women Entrepreneurs
Many think handling business, leading a company, watching and understanding the stats etc is not a woman’s cup of tea, because a woman if wants to lead, need to have a ‘male attitude’ towards competition, aggression and a harsh behavior towards her employees, as there’s no space for a soft one in business.One can always count the number of women in an entrepreneur team or in a seminar; the number is not that good. Though the number of women entrepreneurs is increasing year by year, we still have successful examples of what women are in business, some of them are – VandanaLuthra, founder of VLCC, KiranMazumdar Shaw, founder of Biocon Limited, Priya Paul, chairperson of Park Hotel, Ritu Kumar, fashion designer, Suchi Mukherjee, Founder & CEO of Limeroad, IndraNooyi, the board member of Amazon, Aditi Gupta, co-founder of Menstrupedia, FalguniNayar, founder of Nykaa, Vani Kola, founder of Kalaari Capital, RadhikaGhai Aggarwal, co-founder & CMO, Shopclues.com etc. For some the challenges becomes a stepping stone in their careers and for some it becomes a big barrier to reach even for the very first step. Not just in our country but around the Globe very few percentage of women get to work and amongst them are the few who follow their passion, their dreams.
Major barriers in the life of Women Entrepreneurs –
Gender plays an important role in business field. Clients, Investors, Partners are inclined more towards men business tycoon as they believe they can manage it perfectly. For women there are taboos about how women can lack when it comes to management, strictness, bold decisions etc. Some of the challenges faced by women are:-
1.Role Conflict–Women as a mother or women as a single mother, daughter, sister, and wife has an important role to play when compared to a father, husband, brother, son. There are families with multitasking male members but again they are very few. Women entrepreneurs running a company or tackling a business doesn’t matter if it’s with a small team or a big one has to worry about her domestic life and public one simultaneously, which majorly drains out the energy, also conflicts arises.
2.Lack of Training–In India mostly we don’t have many training programmes for people who come up with business ideas or start ups, especially when it comes to women they have to depend on their male members for finance and for general establishment of ideas. So lack of training plays a major role why women lack behind when it comes to ‘launch their ideas’. Majorly in urban areas entrepreneurs keep their backup options for any financial loss ready but in rural areas few discover the thought of extra savings hence if any of their plans get derailed in the very first trial, it takes a lot of time to collect that much amount again.
3.Travel Safety – It is well known in the industry if you want to grow through your work, you need to travel and must connect to a larger public. A world with pandemic or a world without pandemic, for females whether individually they are confident about travelling or not but their near and dear ones are always worried and have a chain of thoughts about what all bad can happen with a woman travelling alone.
4.Time Management – Not all women get to start their first own idea at an early age, many start after becoming a wife, mother or a divorcee or a single mother. No matter what her position is she had to manage it all. Her kids, her family, the finance, the food etc., this makes many women to leave the race early because managing all of it and run a company or an idea in a fully fledged way is not that easy. So time management is a BIG challenge in the life of women entrepreneurs.
5.Delegating Tasks –On common terms many doesn’t like to take orders from a woman and in a patriarchal society it is not easy to break that mountain, so to delegate the tasks to co-workers, women leaders have to show their capabilities and firm behavior so that the team gets to trust in her. This becomes a great challenge when the work required is urgent or requires an expert from different field, to complete the task in a limited period.
Conclusion –
There are many other challenges which occurin women entrepreneur’s work fields. Most importantly they must be provided with proper facility regarding finance knowledge and networks. Outfitting the maximum capacity of ladies business visionaries can advance advancement, work creation, financial development and social turn of events. In the previous decade, it has been engaging to see ladies in high places that would customarily have a place with men. As time cruises by, we plan to have more ladies business people rising and utilizing the open doors accessible for all ladies to enhance, move, and engage.