There are two parts in the world, one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third part stronger than both and that is women. Women entrepreneurs and their increasing presence in India significantly influence the socio-economic demographics of the country. The participation of women in the labour force has helped millions of families pull out of poverty and has also led to job creation. Women are well known for their leadership skills and hence dominate in new age industries. There has been a never-ending debate raging over whether women can have it all or if they need to sacrifice one element of their lives in order to achieve success.
There is no doubt that women-led enterprises find it difficult to obtain funding as compared to men-led enterprises, the funding landscape needs to change post Covid. Because the impact of Covid has not been gender neutral, we’ve certainly seen more women-led enterprises shut down and more women withdraw from the workforce. We need to support women-led enterprises, so I think there are certainly things that we need to do to change this landscape. We need to have investors with specific mandates focusing on women-led enterprises and not just women-led but women-owned enterprises. The second is that we’ve got to have more Limited Partners (LPs) or institutional investors invest in these funds to put pressure on them and impact the future. We’ve got to have more financial instruments that are focused on women. A lot of lenders ask for collateral such as homes, property, etc. that a lot of women don’t have in their names. It’s appreciating what ‘Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank’ has done and what its chairperson Chetna Gala Sinha has done for rural women. When we are looking at funding women and enterprises, we need to be inclusive, so it’s not just the urban woman, it’s the rural woman too and we need to be able to support all women from all walks of life. I think we should have a better policy, whether it is a financial recovery package or incentives. We need to have measurable targets because a lot of these things are announced but may not be implemented and somewhere down the line, we’ve sort of lost the purpose. So, measuring targets is always a good idea if we have them in place and know that we are reaching the right people. Investing in women just makes good business sense, as it leaves a lasting impact and brings financial gains that influence future generations.
We must train these rural women, who already have these innate skills. They already handle it, they are handling their livestock, their children, they are involved in the work of cutting grass. We just must give them that opportunity, one time training is not enough, we must hand hold them and stick with them. We must make them own the vision and be able to execute it, which they must learn and is required to scale up a business. Another side of the coin is that the Covid might not be all that bad for women, particularly the work-from-home culture, which sounded more like a ‘Gen Z’ thing, or we can call them ‘Zoomers’ and it was not even about ‘Millennials’. It was about this new set of people. I think this work-from-home culture is really going to help us bring a lot of women back into the workforce. For those women who had to take a sabbatical, choosing home over work for several reasons, the post-Covid scenario of work-from-home culture bridges the fact that we’re probably less likely to lose more women with that concept.
I think the greatest injustice is not trying, if you have something you want to do, go out and do it. The best thing you could do for yourself is learn from any mistake or any life experience and move on. So, if you try something and it does not work, learn from it, evolve, improve it and try again. The only way you can grow is when you always look at yourself and want to tell yourself what’s next, because we’ve all seen what’s next in the last 10 years, the way we’ve seen the work culture change with the polycom. Those polycoms and dial-ups, from which we used to take conference calls from anywhere, have been replaced by Zoom calls. So, the whole landscape is changing from a physical medium to now completely digital influences, so change always embraces change.
So, there are going to be a lot of setbacks, which will help you pivot and keep pivoting your approach. It will help you understand the importance of persistence and to have faith in yourself and the people that you are with. The second thing that I would like to mention is that you should appreciate your worth as a woman and also the worth of other women. Another important word is sustainability. Sustainability is not just about using it as a marketing buzzword. Sure, businesses have a lot of potential to transform societies, so just look up what a systems approach is and try to move in that direction, trying to achieve multiple SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) together because, for example, long-term sustainability is the goal. The more senior leaders and well-known women we come across in India, the more I feel they’re all on this journey for a purpose.
The most important message to all the women who are right now studying and aspiring to be working is to please go ahead and make sure that your education is put to good use. It really is worth it, it’s not only required for society to look at you in a particular respectful way, I think that’s the respect you would really earn in your own eyes when you look into the mirror every morning, so go ahead and stand up on your own feet.
(The author is an Advocate by Profession)
