Girl Power Project
Encouraging women to become entrepreneurs, self-dependent Team girl power project
T
he role of gender in economic development process has been increasingly recognized as crucial, both in terms of potential for success and in the nature of the impact of particular development strategies and programs. Gender becomes especially important to consider in case of micro-enterprise approach, as the traditional homecentred roles of women can make it far easier for women to participate in such programs as opposed to the more traditional, large and medium scale enterprises. Jharkhand is rich in mineral resources like coal, iron ore, copper ore, uranium, mica, bauxite, granite, limestone, silver, graphite, magnetite, and dolomite. 80 per cent of the rural population of Jharkhand depends upon agriculture for their livelihood. The effective literacy rate for Jharkhand in Census 2011 works out to 67.63 per cent, with corresponding figures for males and females being 78.45 and 56.21 per cent respectively, with at least 10 districts being below 50 per cent. It is estimated that 56 per cent of young women (ages 1524) are neither engaged in education, nor employment nor training. This is further accentuated by the lack of female education. It is estimated that beyond schooling, only 8 per cent of young women of age 18-24 ever participated in some form of training, and less than 0.1 per cent had secured a vocational training diploma. Given the above context, the gaps in educational status in girls, mainly due to marriage
8
May 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
and domestic pressures, have contributed to fewer opportunities. Within the larger context of social entrepreneurship, Jharkhand has limited success in creating womenbased social entrepreneurship. First, the above lack of education has been a major barrier. Secondly, there is a lack of supportive ecosystems that can enable women to become social entrepreneurs. Most communitybased organizations and civil society organizations working on a rightbased approach focus on the objective of getting one employed rather than instilling a sense of entrepreneurship Girl Power initiated a baseline study of 5000 women to assess the livelihoods of the 10 districts of Jharkhand. The study also aimed to identify and explore the availability of raw materials, potential for entrepreneurship, current entrepreneurial activities and market access and environmental sustainability. With the larger project objective to promote entrepreneurship through a bundle of work packages of network building, capacity building, market connect, skill-building and policy dialogues, over the past year of project implementation, the community resource persons at the ground level have been rigorously working in 10 districts of the state of Jharkhand, gathering information and collecting data of 5000 potential women beneficiaries of the project. The baseline survey studied the potential of rural entrepreneurship among women and the current entrepreneurial activities that add to the larger livelihood generational activities of the household, and their market access for products and services to be sold. Entrepreneurial
activities range from women involved in the selling of agricultural and non-agricultural produce, to nontimber forest produce that is so richly available in the state of Jharkhand. Covering four zones of the state, the survey analysis concluded that 30 per cent of the respondents are already engaged in small entrepreneurial activities that include agricultural and non-agricultural produce. The respondents agreed on the feasibility of various other sectors - handicrafts, mushroom cultivation, organic farming, leaf plate production, candle, incense stick making and running a beauty salon, being a few among others that can be established within the village area. Rural markets have been growing faster than the urban sector, resulting in overall balanced economic and social development. For consumer durables and services, the rural market has more potential than the urban market. Also, since the rural population largely depends on agriculture, it contributes to nearly 50 per cent of the total national income. Operating a business comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Women establishing and operating businesses come with added responsibilities and obstacles. During the baseline survey, it was visible that there were a lot of obstacles that existing women entrepreneurs had to face on a daily basis in the dayto-day operation of their enterprise. Major obstacles faced by women lie in the marketing of goods or services. Lack of knowledge of new products in the urban market and technical skills of running an enterprise are two of the major obstacles, coupled with the hiked transportation prices
