Modi makes a valuable point on women's empowerment, Ivanka agrees
US President Donald Trump's daughter and Adviser Ivanka has laid open the possibilities of women's empowerment in India while sharing the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad. A keen businesswoman, she highlighted how the Indian economy could grow by over $150 billion in the next three years if we could close the gender gap in the labour force. Clearly, she was talking about encouraging women entrepreneurship and participation at the grassroot level, something that the Modi Government has attempted to address consistently but still needs to work on much more. While Modi eulogised nari shakti at the summit, he was quick to align the extremities by acknowledging the contribution of women in the Mars Orbiter mission as well as the cooperative movements that gave us lijjat papad and Amul.
India continues to be at the bottom when it comes to entrepreneurship by women. Although we have had some shining examples of women owners, CEOs and women-driven companies, the numbers of which have been growing in recent years, societally entrepreneurship is still considered to be a male bastion. A study by the National Sample Survey Organisation has shown that only 14 per cent of Indian business establishments are run by females. The same study found that most women-run businesses — 79 per cent — were self-financed.
In 2015, The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) found India lagging behind desperately in its female entrepreneurship index, ranking 70th out of 77 countries. And a Mastercard survey this year has India at 49 among 54 it had sampled while acknowledging “a significant potential to harness.” It is this potential that the Modi Government has started working on. The Stand-up India scheme provides loans upwards of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore to women entrepreneurs. Special incentives and rates have been worked out for loans to tribal women. The success of rural cooperatives by women proves that they can slowly be eased to bigger businesses of food parks and agricultural machinery. Urban start-ups are drawing in young women early. In keeping with the demand of emerging markets, even the World Bank this year offered venture capital support to help women start businesses.
While women are believed to be more achievement-oriented, when it comes to running a business, there is more than funding that can actually unleash the shakti inside. Skill development missions could be geared towards empowering women to start businesses through education and mentoring. This would have to be practical, explicit, hands-on and module-based so that the women can not only operate in familiar territory but be encouraged to step into areas that are hitherto considered the male preserve, namely manufacturing and engineering. This mentoring can become an integral part of corporate CSR and in the villages tie up with various outreach programme through NGOs and government networks. In urban centres, such mentoring camps and courses can be linked to banks that provide loans to women entrepreneurs for a cohesive and coordinated push. The biggest accelerator though has to be emboldened marketing and retail networks where more than the government, private players can come in. Some online retail platforms have already started a separate window for rural women.
