Women Entrepreneurs in Dhaka: Some Barriers to Success

Abstract

Over the past two decades, norms segregating and protecting women have been breaking down. However, it is also apparent that female economic participation has in fact, marginalized women mainly because the activities involved in many areas does not provide women complete control over production, in land ownership or in income earned. In regular cases, the initiatives in this regard have transferred women from the core production activities to marginal ones, such as handicraft, handloom, or home-based industries than the more sophisticated productions involving modern technology, which are usually controlled by the male entrepreneurs. Women are not being able to play a controlling role in the mainstream production where the male power has remained intact. No dent is easily created in patriarchy and the patriarchal value system of the society where women have been forced to enter and is involved marginally, being pushed increasingly into problematic situations. Their work load has increased manifold as they have to do both the domestic work and the income earning ones also. The changing role of women shows that over the last two decades, there has been a steady upward trend in the participation of women in economic activities in developing countries as Bangladesh. Despite the problem of serious under-enumeration of women's involvement in economic activities in a sex segregated society as ours, the potential of women's economic contribution is now well recognized.