Income generating activities adopted and constraints faced by women entrepreneurs in Rural Punjab

In a developing country like India, entrepreneurship can provided new impetus to job creation and economic development. Small scale business activities adopted by women entrepreneurs can contribute to rural development. It will also provide economic security and empower rural women as an individual. In present study, an attempt was made to study entrepreneurial activities adopted by women entrepreneurs in rural Punjab, benefits realized and constraints faced by them. For this purpose, four districts of Punjab were purposively selected i.e., Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Patiala. The data were collected using pre-tested questionnaire from 60 randomly selected women entrepreneurs. The results of the study revealed that women entrepreneurs had adopted various income generating activities viz., pickle making (30%), football sewing (15.0%) and phukari making (21.7%). Rise in income was realized benefit by 18.3% of the women entrepreneurs. Various constraints faced by rural women entrepreneurs were lack of credit facilities (25%), male dominance (13%), tough competition (11%), limited physical mobility (9%), low risk-bearing ability (5%), lack of marketing know-how (05%), lack of technical skills (04%), low self-esteem (3%) and limited access to technology (3%), etc. It was concluded that entrepreneurship development programme should focus on identified constraints faced by rural women entrepreneurs which would boost entrepreneurial activities and rural development in near future.