This story is from February 18, 2020

NEW DELHI: Urgently facilitating more women to join the league of entrepreneurs holds the key to boosting the job market and increase the labour force participation of women.

A new report by Bain & Company and Google titled “Women Entrepreneurship in India – Powering the economy with her” identifies six dominant segments of women entrepreneurs and estimates India to have 13.5–15.7 million women-owned enterprises, representing just 20% of all enterprises. These enterprises are creating direct employment for 22 million to 27 million people in India.

The report pushes for an integrated policy framework for accelerating entrepreneurship among women including those from semi-urban and rural areas.

As per the report, an all - state effort focused on enabling women entrepreneurship can by 2030 increase direct and indirect employment for 150 to 170 million people. This number is more than 25% of the new jobs required for entire working age population by 2030. If accomplished this will put India at par with several emerging and advanced economies where more than 40% of all enterprises are women - owned.

The challenge is certainly a big one, given that as per the data shared in the report, of the approximately 432 million working age women in India, about 343 million are not in paid formal work. An estimated 324 million of these women are not in the labour force and another 19 million are in the labour force but not employed. There is need to create jobs for up to 400 million women of working age 15-64.

The report also sheds light on the present day challenges and gender biases that are holding back women entrepreneurs from gaining their full potential.

Socio-cultural challenges like women’s perceived role as primary care givers, difficulty in obtaining social permission to work and other factors like access to funds remains constrained, limited access to business and technical skills and the fact that women are less integrated with formal and informal networks.

The report takes into account in-depth conversations with 60 entrepreneurs from various segments and a granular survey of 1,100 women entrepreneurs across urban and rural areas to understand the motivations and constraints of the entrepreneurs. While 90% of the women surveyed wanted their business to grow, 69% cited socio-cultural constraints as inhibitors.

Of all women-owned enterprises, a majority are single person enterprises, with the largest group represented by rural non-farm home-based business owners at 38%, followed by urban self-employed women solopreneurs at 31%, who usually work from home.

The other dominant segments include rural agripreneurs who are farm-based business owners at 18% and small business owners at 14% - split across urban (6%) and rural (8%), employing less than 10 employees and contributing most to employment generation. Finally, there are the scalers, who employ more than 10 people and account for less than 1%.

The report outlines key opportunity areas to unlock the potential of women and entrepreneurship in India. This includes the need to level the playing field for high-impact, strengthen the employment-creating entrepreneurs and productive rural agripreneurs.

