Women Entrepreneurship Development in the Small and Medium Enterprises in Bangladesh: Prospects, Realities and Policies

Irrespective of gender type, entrepreneurship acts as a crucially important driver of economic growth and social change in all societies. Development of women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh is immensely important as women constitute half of the country’s work force. Women-owned and women operated businesses are on increase in Bangladesh. However, their representation in total business ownership is still peripheral, being in the region of 3 to 5 percent. This is an indication of a huge potential human resource lying untapped which needs to be utilized to transform and modernise the country’s economic structure through creating new enterprises. There seems to be no dearth of enthusiasm among women to assume business leadership to ensure their own economic security, become selt-reliant, build professional career in business, contribute to employment creation and income generation and assist national economic growth. Like their counterparts in other developing countries, majority of the WEs in Bangladesh make their debut in business at relatively young age, possess higher educational background, elated social status and occupational background, and exhibit notable intergenerational occupational mobility. They are eager to do well and strongly motivated to innovate, diversify their business, and demonstrate dynamism to excell as business professionals. Recent policy initiatives from successive Governments and various private sector stakeholders to facilitate entry and retention of women as entrepreneurs are noteworthy. But the ground reality is still highly inhibitive to women’s participation in business and operating as entrepreneurs in a conducive environment. Women entrepreneurs still suffer form disproportionately greater obstacles than their male counterparts in accessing bank credits, face rigid and non-transparent regulatory barriers, institutional rigidities and various policy-induced constraints resulting from gender-bias. Women entrepreneurs’ predicaments are further multiplied by the pattriarchial social norms and family values which are seriously anti-developmental. The need is therefore to remove all socio-economic barriers by taking more pro-active policy initiatives and designing an effective implementation mechanism of the policies and programmers at macro as well as micro levels which are gender-neutral and explicitly pro-women.