Macro Level Analysis of Women Entrepreneurship

Abstract

"When woman moves forward, the family moves, the village moves and the nation moves”. These words of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru are often repeated because it is an accepted fact, that only when women are in the main- stream of progress can any economic and social development be meaningful. Awareness amongst women has definitely led them to participate in work. The decadal trends of work participation ratio of Indian women has revealed that while it was 14.22 percent in 1971, it increased to 19.67 percent in 1981 and 22.73 percent in 1991 and 25.60 percent in 2001. As per the census of India (2001) about 127.22 million women constituting 25.6 percent of the total female population of India are employed, majority of them are in rural areas. Women entrepreneurs presently comprise about 10 percent of the total number of entrepreneurs in India. The pace of modern economic growth provides an ample scope for expansion of employment opportunities for women. Macro level analysis of my paper depicts that women comprise near about 50 percent of the total population but only 10 percent of the women are working in industry, service and trade sectors, which is very less but it exactly matches with the micro level analysis as well.