Constraints on Women Entrepreneurship Development in Kerala: An ...

all aspects of management and at least 50 percent of the employment generated in the enterprise
goes to women. MMUs are, on the other hand, women’s enterprises only in name, the dejure
‘entrepreneur’ not even knowing much about the enterprise and playing little or no role in
management irrespective of whether the employees are women or not.
The sample was divided also into categories of successful, average and unsuccessful judged
on the basis of performance in production, labour, sales, expenditure, and profit; the views
of the entrepreneurs concerned were also considered in this categorisation.
Workshop
All the sample entrepreneurs were requested to participate in a week-long workshop. Those
who intended to participate were asked to furnish detailed information about their enterprise
– type of enterprise, nature of activity, size of the enterprise in terms of Capital Inversed,
volume and value of sales, financial assistance received, and awards or other recognition
achieved. Out of the 104 entries received the men-managed units (MMU) were screened
out. So also were those who absented themselves on the opening day of the workshop.
Thus 64 units were considered of which 33 were wholly managed by women (WMU) and
31 jointly managed (JMU). Through informal group discussions and brainstorming among
the entrepreneurs, an attempt at planning for future was carried out. For the participants it
was an opportunity to consult experts on their problems.
In-depth interviews
Twenty women entrepreneurs were identified from among the participants of the workshop,
10 “successful”, 5 “average”, and 5 “unsuccessful” for in-depth interviews. The rapport
created at the workshop made it easier for eliciting delicate information on attitudes, and
traits, which would have been otherwise difficult to gather. In-depth interview made it possible
to ask open-ended and unstructured questions according to the specific individual situation,
and gave more time for the respondents to express themselves. Facts changed back and
forth as most of the sample were from educationally backward entrepreneurs.
Data collection
Data were collected through personal visits to the home and enterprise of the selected woman
entrepreneurs. The interviews tried to incorporate the views of the families to the extent
possible. They were primarily intended to look at the last two objectives of the study namely;
(1) the women entrepreneurs’ dependence level on family for enterprise development and
(2) impact of religious differences among entrepreneurs on their ability and willingness for
enterprise management. These interviews were used to understand the constraints that
successful, unsuccessful, and the average performers faced from their families and from
the society at large.
The respondents were selected solely from the WMU group. Based on the rate of success all
the 33 WMUs were ranked starting with the most successful ones going down to the least
successful. Thus 10 successful women entrepreneurs, followed by 5 average performers
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