Women’s entrepreneurship for rural development in South Asia
In South Asia, overall development is not possible without the development of the rural areas, where the majority of the population resides. A variety of projects and programs have been conducted to that effect, but there has been no development as expected.
Most public interventions undertaken in the past have failed to speed up rural development. Poor public resource management, non-implementation of effective policies and local governments’ indifference has largely contributed to this failure. Consequently, the rural areas still remain deprived of most basic amenities and infrastructures such as, primary education, health care, drinking water and road. Adequate attention has not been given to improve this situation as yet.
In many rural areas, work is exhausting and poor marketing system impedes progress. Apart from this, local resources remain unexploited due to shortage of sufficient capital and skilled manpower. Despite this, women’s labor force, which constitute about half the population of the rural areas, is far from satisfactory. If the available women’s workforce can be utilized more productively, it will greatly contribute to rural development.
Although women play a significant role in rural areas, as most of them are uneducated, they still have to rely on male counterparts to maintain their livelihood. Low female literacy rate has hindered the effectiveness of economic and social development programs in rural areas. Also, lack of employment opportunities deprives them of bringing their labor to productive use. Consequently, most of them cannot earn and are unable to support their respective households.
Denying them work opportunities will never make them self-reliant. In this regard, to provide income-generating opportunities for rural women, it is essential to provide them appropriate skill development training.
In the past few years, the political necessity and democratic processes set into motion made it difficult to segregate and neglect such a large section of population. Hence, the idea of policies and programs for women’s development began to take shape. But still, despite the tall claims of political leaders, the majority of rural women in South Asia continue to be exploited by men.
Even today, a large number of South Asian rural women are involved in agriculture apart from other subsidiary work, such as livestock rearing, construction work, cottage industry, teaching, nursing and clerical activities. Until now, however, women have not been encouraged to emerge as entrepreneurs.
Until entrepreneurship is developed among women folk, they will continue to be subjected to exploitation and discrimination by men. It is the demand of modern time that women’s entrepreneurship be developed to accelerate rural development in South Asia.