Problems and Prospects of Women Entrepreneurship with special reference to MSMEs in the State of Gujarat

Abstract

quot newlineIn Gujarat there exists a dire need to identify various enabling factors, limiting factors and prospective factors which limits/encourages women to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. This paper aims to identify the above mentioned by interviewing women entrepreneurs of the state of Gujarat. newline newlineIt is an exploratory research which has been conducted to study women entrepreneurs in the state of Gujarat. A total of 401 sample women entrepreneurs have been interviewed with help of interview schedule from Gandhinagar (North), Kachch (East), Rajkot (Saurashtra), Vadodara (West), Surat (South) and Ahmedabad (Central) to reach to a fair conclusion. Data has been analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics 21.0 version and Microsoft Windows 2007 Office Excel Worksheet has been used to present results in form of tables, bar charts and pie charts wherever applicable. For analysis, the significance level is 0.05. Using the sample data chi-square test of independence is conducted. newline newlineIn case of women entrepreneurs in Gujarat education, family and inner zeal and will-power are vital enabling factors which elevate their motivation scale to perform in the state. Most hurdling limiting factors have been dual role in home and business, poor knowledge of government support schemes, ignorance about banking procedures and formalities, poor knowledge of financial management, lack of leisure time and lack of technological skills. With regard to prospect, researcher found that there exist ample prospects in services sector over manufacturing and other trading business. newline newlineThe research is based on the lands of Gujarat hence language barrier has been most important for the researcher. Besides language other barriers have been approach of those respondents who sought husband s permission to give responses to the researcher, government data as many registered units were mostly shut or women owner respondents showed their inability to respond to the researcher even on repeated approaches made by the researcher because of their personal enga