Women Entrepreneurship and Gender Issues

Abstract

Developing countries like India rely majorly on the performance of agriculture and manufacturing (industrial) sectors for their economic development. Agriculture sector in India has a vast employment potential but it is unable to absorb the growing population. Given this situation, everyone is in search of an alternative to meet their increasing needs. Hence, attention was drawn on accelerating the economic growth through rapid industrialization in the post independence planning era. In fact, the small-scale sector has been assigned high priority in the development of economy and accorded top priority in the successive Five Year Plans for achieving the socio-economic objectives. A plethora of measures were undertaken in order to achieve socio-economic objectives such as launching various developmental programmes, extending financial support through the network of financial institutions to develop entrepreneurial activity, etc. As small-scale sector has been assigned high priority in the development of economy, the role of smaller enterprises become significant in their contribution to economic and social empowerment of people in India