DESPITE immense opportunities for women entrepreneurship to grow manifold in Bangladesh it has not thrived to the level of expectations in the country mainly due to social taboos, women unfriendly environment and family barriers. Prominent women entrepreneurs in a seminar on Monday called for more allocations in the new budget to impart training to women entrepreneurs and extend institutional and banking support to them. The budget should provide incentives to take care of enhancing their creative skill, managerial ability, production capacity and marketing outlets.
Women’s entrepreneurship is vital for the nation to grow and as the speakers said without exploiting their potentials a nation remains halfway to development. Only men and women can pull the nation together. Given the opportunities, women can equally prove their capacity to make strong contribution to socio-economic growth. A family having women working in government office or private business is better off and less poor than the family without. Moreover women are setting up more business now to make their families solvent and also creating jobs for others. They are producing for local market and some are in export business. The fact is that they have already proven their potentials and what is needed now is to make way for greater number of women to join business. It also needs their easy access to resources on easy term to exploit their under-utilized capacity for socio-economic growth.
It is no doubt women empowerment has gone a long way in Bangladesh but making their contribution more meaningful they need more incentives and hassle free environment for business. Government rules and regulations should not impediment on their way. There is no denying of the fact that as a male-dominated country women are still disadvantaged and discriminated here for many reasons but the gap is slowly narrowing in an optimistic turn that they are now in a position to empower themselves. As the number of educated women is growing social barriers to women becoming entrepreneurs is also faltering.
We share the participants’ views that women should have collateral free loan up to certain level and they must be given easy access to bank loans on their identity as businesswoman. Bangladesh ranked at the bottom among 16 countries in the Asia Pacific region in MasterCard’s first Women’s Entrepreneurial Index in spite of the huge strides taken in the last three decades. The Economic Census 2013 showed only 7.21 percent enterprises in Bangladesh are women run business and it means we must have more. So women’s financing must not remain constraint to SME loans only. We must say their loan discrimination from banking windows must end; their credibility must be treated on economic power they enjoy both at family level and in society.
We must say women’s socio-economic status must grow and expand and reach out at every level of creative business. It needs inclusive policies to integrate women in the country’s mainstream economic development.
Women’s entrepreneurship is vital for the nation to grow and as the speakers said without exploiting their potentials a nation remains halfway to development. Only men and women can pull the nation together. Given the opportunities, women can equally prove their capacity to make strong contribution to socio-economic growth. A family having women working in government office or private business is better off and less poor than the family without. Moreover women are setting up more business now to make their families solvent and also creating jobs for others. They are producing for local market and some are in export business. The fact is that they have already proven their potentials and what is needed now is to make way for greater number of women to join business. It also needs their easy access to resources on easy term to exploit their under-utilized capacity for socio-economic growth.
It is no doubt women empowerment has gone a long way in Bangladesh but making their contribution more meaningful they need more incentives and hassle free environment for business. Government rules and regulations should not impediment on their way. There is no denying of the fact that as a male-dominated country women are still disadvantaged and discriminated here for many reasons but the gap is slowly narrowing in an optimistic turn that they are now in a position to empower themselves. As the number of educated women is growing social barriers to women becoming entrepreneurs is also faltering.
We share the participants’ views that women should have collateral free loan up to certain level and they must be given easy access to bank loans on their identity as businesswoman. Bangladesh ranked at the bottom among 16 countries in the Asia Pacific region in MasterCard’s first Women’s Entrepreneurial Index in spite of the huge strides taken in the last three decades. The Economic Census 2013 showed only 7.21 percent enterprises in Bangladesh are women run business and it means we must have more. So women’s financing must not remain constraint to SME loans only. We must say their loan discrimination from banking windows must end; their credibility must be treated on economic power they enjoy both at family level and in society.
We must say women’s socio-economic status must grow and expand and reach out at every level of creative business. It needs inclusive policies to integrate women in the country’s mainstream economic development.
