The women enterprise development can meet the two major challenges that the country is facing: women empowerment and sustainable economic growth. By promoting women enterprises, the vast potentials of women entrepreneurship can be channalised to meet these two challenges. Such a development can also strengthen the structural adjustment reforms that are part of the current initiatives for devolving power at the grass roots level.
Like many other developing countries, the role of women in the national development is being highlighted for the last couple of years. It is being discussed at the national level to be followed by some initiatives by the government and the civil society organisations, mostly at legislative and policy levels. Women have also got reserved seats in all the three tiers of law-making bodies. The government is also executing a `gender and development plan’2001-2011 and recently, `Women Protection’ bills have been passed The impact of all these measures is yet to be seen.
The women development is not only an issue about equalising women with men, rather it is an aspect of the national socio-economic development. Equality and equity between men and women is an academic issue but more important is the ground reality which says that nearly half of the population is lagging behind in all walks of life because opportunities of access to education, health-care, choice of profession for women are almost negligible. And the discrimination on the basis of sex has proved counter-productive.
Human capital theorists argue that such an under-utilisation of resources is wasteful, irrational, and disadvantageous to the nation’s growth. Their arguments are based on the assumption that when women's advancement in a career is based on merit alone, they will be able to excel and advance more rapidly.
The Federal Labour Force Survey mentions in its 2005/2006 report that the over-all women employment rate is 20.14 per cent, rural and urban areas women’s participation 23.63 and 12.53 per cent, respectively. Although the figure on women-owned businesses was not available, it is estimated at about one per cent of the total local/national and multinational enterprises.
A large number of women entrepreneurs is involved in traditional businesses such as boutiques, parlours, bakeries while some of them are in manufacturing, consultancies and service provision also. However, the largest number of skilled women labour force is employed in garments and handicrafts sector. In general, urban women are better placed than those working in rural areas.
Information gaps, marketing channels and poor networking are major challenges to the growth of women enterprises. Women are either unaware of modern marketing tactics that would fetch better returns for the same product or remain restrained to the local markets due to a number of other problems.
For one reason or the other, women remain out of touch from domestic and international markets. The gaps are multiple on their part, such as, lack of business awareness and lack of knowledge as to where these markets are; and how to reach them.
Moreover, most of women entrepreneurs operate businesses from homes and they have low level of education and technical skills. Even their finances are controlled by male family members. However, economic necessity is now forcing more and more women to engage in some sort of employment and income generation activities.
As mentioned, women have only 20.14 per cent of representation in the combined rural-urban labour force. A comparison of this figure with the women population, refers to a segment of population which is under-represented by 26.36 per cent in its own as women are 47.5 per cent of the total population. The representation of women in Pakistan in economic activities is much less compared to other semi-industrialised Muslim countries like Turkey (25 per cent) and Malaysia (47.3 per cent).
However, it is encouraging to note that more than 45 per cent of the adult women population has made its way into the national economic scene, but the women’s involvement in non-agricultural sector is only 6.7 per cent. Even in the agricultural sector, women are involved in the menial work which carries less value and is generally considered as merely supporting activities.
Initiatives: Cognisant of the importance of women participation in the overall economic growth, the government established a Women Division in 1979 and a `national action plan’ was issued in 1998 which detailed the strategic objectives of 12 targeted areas and their respective plans. In 2000, a plan under the title, “gender and development’: was prepared mainly for eradicating poverty by making available micro credit to women for income generating purposes. However, even after the lapse of seven years, the women development indicators have hardly changed.
Missing links: So what is missing from the official plans/schemes and the various rural support programmes launched by international funding agencies? They are: the mechanism of implementation and a will-to-do. In this regard, a number of questions also arise such as, what initiatives have been taken by ministry of women development, ministry of industries and ministry of commerce and trade; whether proper information was conveyed to the target group about policies/plans and facilities provided by the various governments and non-governmental bodies and what strategies were outlined to shift women workforce from agricultural to the manufacturing sector?
The last question should not mean migration of women workforce from villages to cities It simply means, increasing the share of manufacturing sector in total GDP by establishing agro-based small units focusing on women workforce in rural areas.
Besides a good plan and availability of small loans/micro credit packages of soft skills, supportive environments and networking with business and non-governmental organisations needs to be developed to mobilise women to the manufacturing sector through their own enterprises. The package of soft skills may include the following:
Entrepreneurship and enterprise development; product designing; computing/accounting skills; networking and marketing skills.
The supporting environment includes: identification of sources of funds, availability of raw material at subsidised prices, identification of markets--locally/internationally; provision of quality control, and tax holidays on the produce of women enterprises. Finally, the networking with business and non-governmental organisations (ngo’s) involve profit sector to provide some space in production, supplies, marketing and selling for women enterprises.
Similarly, the NGO’s can help building capacities and polishing women’s natural talents and can also play a crucial role in counseling and guiding women in getting maximum benefits from the government’s facilities available for them.
Public private partnership: A formal/informal type of partnership can be established for women enterprises development, the framework for which can be formulated between the government and NGOs.