Policy Exploration around constraining factors of Women Entrepreneurship: A step

towards women empowerment.

ABSTRACT

According to Amartya Sen (1992) “Women Empowerment is the ability of women to exercise
full control over one’s actions and is one of the central issues in the process of development for
many countries in the world today.” Women are empowered when they have the freedom to
control and command their own lives. Economic empowerment increases women’s access to
economic resources and opportunities including jobs, financial services, property, skills
development and market information. One way of ensuring such economic empowerment of
Indian women is through 'enhanced role of education' or 'enhanced role of entrepreneurship'.
This paper aims to focus on the economic empowerment through entrepreneurship. This study
details how entrepreneurship can have manifold benefits in empowering women than just
focusing on their education. It then tries to establish the various challenges that Indian women
entrepreneurs face to start and run their entrepreneurial ventures successfully. The study finally
suggests policy measures, business and management training, and the promotion of
entrepreneurial networking systems, as potential ways to empower women entrepreneurs and the
role played by the government in creating leadership opportunities, in the hopes of bringing
women into the mainstream business sector across Indian economy.

Keywords: Women empowerment, women entrepreneurship, Challenges.