Women Entrepreneurship and Gender Bias: A Study of Micro Enterprises in Bhopal

Abstract

Women constitute half of the world's population. Today the difficulty is to move from the acceptance of equal rights to the reality of equal opportunity. This transition will not be complete until women and men have equal opportunities to occupy positions in power structures throughout the world. This includes not only public law making and policy formulating bodies, but also the world of private business. Society as a whole stands to gain by accelerating the process. We attempt to explore these fundamental issues and further analyse the present situation with respect to women entrepreneurs. To benefit fully from the entrepreneurial capacities of women, it is important to understand the structures and attitudes in our societies that support or hinder their efforts. The paper talks about status of women entrepreneurs and the problems faced by them as they venture out to carve their own niche in the competitive world of business. We discuss the implication of our findings for studies that relate to micro enterprises established by women in Bhopal city.