Entrepreneurship & Small Business Development

From Stanford Social Innovation Review:

"We’d love to have a gender lens, but we’d have nothing to invest in.” I rocked back on my heels, absorbing this statement from the head of the Africa division of a large social investment fund.

Yet he is not alone. Two years ago, when I first talked with the head of a domestic fund investing in women entrepreneurs, she said, “Jackie I don’t have a gender lens.” Her concern was that a “gender lens” made her appear soft, not return-focused.

For the last two years, I’ve led Women Effect Investments, a field building initiative for gender lens investing. In the process I’ve discovered multiple challenges talking about gender in the investment world. It surfaces concerns about quotas and quality, culture and stereotypes. It is seen as soft, unnecessarily feminist, or limiting. I see a huge opportunity in transcending these concerns. Given women’s centrality worldwide to economic development, health, education, and a strong civil society, investing with a gender lens illuminates opportunities and highlights risks.  Take, for instance, the need for electricity in maternity clinics or the challenges that emerge when loan officers are all men. If more investment vehicles employed a gender lens, we could accelerate change for everyone.

From The Economic Times:

From being treated as a quiet, supportive half of society, women who want to start a business in India now find the country to provide one of the most fertile environments based on indicators such as business confidence, motivation, financing options and other sources of support.

The finding is part of Dell Women's Global Entrepreneurship Study conducted across 450 women entrepreneurs from US, UK and India commissioned by Dell.

It reveals that 71 per cent of woman entrepreneurs in India have a branding in market for their businesses and eight in every 10 woman entrepreneurs are hiring which indicates an expansion spree in their individual businesses as well as increase in employment opportunities too.

"When I started my business I didn't even know how to write a business proposal for getting a loan sanctioned. But I was born to be a businesswoman and hence I could reach this stage without looking back," says Rita Singh, MESCO Steel Group who has been awarded the "Best Woman Entrepreneur of the decade" by FICCI.

Another entrepreneur Ishita Swarup, who owns a shopping portal 99 labels says, "Women have become more experimental and are slowly shedding their inhibitions of taking risk. I frequently meet women who want to start something of their own but are afraid of taking the plunge and always advise them to just make a plan and hit the market. Over thinking should be kept for handling crisis if there are any."

[...]

From USA Today:

Reshaping a time-worn narrative isn't easy. Social revolutions rarely are, especially when you're a woman trying to break into the boys' club that is Silicon Valley.