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

In both the WMU and the whole group, more than one-half the entrepreneurs considered the
performance of their units ‘not successful’. The proportion of clear success cases was only
around 30 percent.
The proportion of successful units was found to be the highest among MMUs, followed by
JMUs; in WMUs, the successful cases were the lowest, only one-third (Table 3.3).
Table 3.3 Levels of Performance of Women Enterprises by WMUs, JMU, and MMU Types
Group Successful Average Unsuccessful Total
No. (percent) No. (percent) No. (percent) No. (percent)
WMU 33 (33.3) 27 (29.7) 31 (34.1) 91 (100)
JMU 20 (35.1) 12 (21.0) 25 (43.9) 57 (100)
MMU 26 (50.0) 11 (21.12) 15 (28.8) 52 (100)
TOTAL 79 (39.5) 50 (25.0) 71 (35.5) 200(100.0)
While WMUs’ success rate is lower than that of MMUs, the rate of non-success is the
highest among the JMUs. In order to understand the causes for the lower performance
levels of JMUs, some attempt is made later in this section.
Community
The distribution of the entrepreneurs according to religious groups is given in Table 3.4.
Hindus constituted 72.5 percent, Christians 15.5 percent and Muslims 12.5 percent. The
majority of the entrepreneurs belonged to backward castes (62 percent) and Scheduled
Castes (9.5 percent) [Table 3.5].
Table3.5 Distribution of Women Entrepreneurs by Religion and Community Status
Religion Forward Backward Scheduled Total
Hindu 52 (35.86) 76 (52.41) 17 (11.72) 145 (72.5)
Christian 5 (16.12) 26 (83.87) 0 31 (15.5)
Muslim 0 22 (91.66) 2 (8.3) 24 (12.0)
Total 57 (28.5) 124 (62.0) 19 (9.5) 200 (100)
Most of those who came under backward and Scheduled Caste communities were Hindus;
a few Christians and all the Muslims came under the category of backward communities.
The distribution of entrepreneurs by community according to group status is given in Table 3.6.
Table 3.6 Distribution of Entrepreneurs by Community according to Group Status
Group Forward Backward Scheduled Total
WMU 31 (34.1) 47 (51.6) 13 (14.3) 91 (100)
JMU 16 (28.1) 38 (66.7) 3 (5.3) 57 (100)
MMU 10 (19.2) 39 (75.0) 3 (5.8) 52 (100)
Total 57(28.5) 124(62.0) 19(9.5) 200(100.0)
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