Published in The Financial Express on Monday, 7 March 2017
Business education hardly promotes female entrepreneurship
Doulot Akter Mala
Around 50 per cent of the country’s population are women. There is no denying of the fact that development and participation of women for the country’s economic and social development are crucial. Over the decades, they are doing better in services and education sectors. Literacy rates of women are increasing fast with the initiatives coming from both private and public sectors. Contribution of women workforce is also significant in Bangladesh.
According to Economic Census 2013, in urban area, 25.15 per cent of activities are female headed while in rural area the ratio is 74.85 per cent. The census also showed that 74 per cent working female are full time workers while the ratio is 59.3 per cent.
Despite all these developments, participation of young educated women in entrepreneurship development of the country is still very low. Education system of the country also prepares a student to become a corporate executive, not an entrepreneur. Constraints in the start-up businesses discourage many to invest in a new business venture. Most of them prefer to be employee than that of to be self-employed despite few of them have their own capital for starting a business.
Women, who are deprived of proper education, must get the opportunity to do businesses but a group of young educated leaders can lead them to the path of the success. Women entrepreneurs need to focus on product diversification, innovation and come up from traditional business concept.
Product diversification and innovation by the women entrepreneurs remained stagnant at a certain stage. They are mostly investing in some particular products and services. Boutique, beauty parlours, handy crafts, clay and wax made products are the main goods products by the women entrepreneurs for years.
Innovative idea and skill development is imperative for the women entrepreneurs who are already in the businesses. But, there must be initiative to encourage educated section of women to come up as entrepreneur and contribute to the country.
Many of the educated women cannot join job for family reason or leave job after having children. It has been found that many of them start business to pass time, not with full dedication. Passion and dedication to build a successful business venture are found missing there. It is unfortunate that professionalism in business development yet to grow in an expected level to encourage other young women. Absence of adequate number success stories about women entrepreneurs and hassles in business process are the reasons behind this.
Women entrepreneurs found successful in case of those who have joined family businesses or have strong support from her husband, father or other relatives. Many women are placed as board of directors of different companies who are mostly family members of the owners of the company.
Education system also needs overhauling to help young generation guide how they could start a new business. What they should need for a business such as trade licence, Taxpayers Identification Number, Business Identification Number (BIN) etc.
Why young educated women are not coming up as entrepreneurs?
Saira Banu, working as Research Executive of Sajeda Foundation, studied BBA and MBA from Dhaka University, lamented that the education system prepares a student to be a corporate executive, not an entrepreneur.
“We were almost 30 to 40 per cent female students in our batch. But none of us has become an entrepreneur,” she said.
Rather, soft nature of jobs such as teaching profession is mostly suggested for the female students, she said.
Institute of Business Administration (IBA) of Dhaka University (DU) professor Dr Yousuf Abdullah said the culture to develop entrepreneurs yet to emerge in our country.
“Still, there is a negative perception about entrepreneurship. Society, government or state did not come up with efforts to encourage young people to become entrepreneurs,” he said.
The education system prepares a student to become a manager, not an entrepreneur, he added.
“Our academic curriculum is also not perfect for developing a student as an entrepreneur,” he said.
He suggested both public and private universities to lay emphasis on this issue as employment generation and economic development largely depend on entrepreneurship development.
“When entrepreneurs will start getting recognition and due honour from the state and society young people will come forward,” he added.
Dr Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director of the private think-tank Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said the path of entrepreneurship is not so smooth in Bangladesh for both men and women.
New entrepreneurs face problem to arrange capital for their businesses, do not have specific guidelines on where they will invest, she said.
Marketing of products is another big challenge for small entrepreneurs, she added.
Dr Fahmida suggested the women associations to come up with large scale initiatives, workshops to train up the entrepreneurs and develop their skills.
She also underscored the need for updating the educational curriculum and appoint expert faculty in the higher education level for building young educated entrepreneurs.
Former Managing Director of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Foundation Syed Rezwanul Kabir said the problems such as harassment the young entrepreneurs face often should be addressed immediately.
Although there are guidelines of Bangladesh Bank (BB) that women entrepreneurs will get loan at single digit interest rate but many banks are not following those directives, he added.
They do also face bureaucratic red-tape in many stage including where to go with the idea, where capital would be available etc, he added.
SME foundations provide training to the entrepreneurs but follow-up of the status of those entrepreneurs after receiving the training is also important, he added.
A study has found women entrepreneurs are not getting fair price for their products. Also, insignificant legal and administrative support and social barriers have been identified among the major obstacles.
The study on ‘building women in business: a situation analysis of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh’ conducted by the Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI) in cooperation with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) in 2008.
The age structure of the respondents illustrates that most of the women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh are young and they belong to age group 15-31 years. Of them, 54 per cent were students just before being involved in business.
Although women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh are not highly educated, about 90 per cent in the study sample have at least secondary school certificate (10 years of formal education).
The study also found that 65 per cent of the respondents did not know anything about the circular of Bangladesh Bank on refinancing scheme for women SME. Among 35 per cent of the respondents, who are informed of this circular, 79 per cent of them got information from BWCCI through its various activities like seminar, training etc.
Although 35 per cent of the total respondents heard about the circular, 59 per cent of them did not know about all provisions of the circular. Bangladesh bank or any other banks did not take any effective mechanism to disseminate information among women entrepreneurs or other stakeholders. Even bankers working at the local level were not informed of this circular, which was evident from BWCCI’s advocacy activities. Poor information dissemination process contributed to hindering poor implementation of this circular.
Country’s economic development, employment generation largely depends on entrepreneurship development. Micro credit helps grassroots level of women to grow as entrepreneur. It has been recognized as an effective tool to foster entreprenourship among the rural women. Women entrepreneurs have to develop skilled leaders for showing their way of success. Updated information about policy changes, budgetary measures, tax, VAT and customs duty, import and export policy are vital information for business operation. Women entrepreneurs should not depend on others for digesting those financial aspects of trade and commerce. Economic empowerment of women would be expedited when business-related basic information would be consumed by the women entrepreneurs.