Rupashree Baral

Purpose: This paper aims to provide relevant knowledge about entrepreneurship and women’s leadership in the Indian context. More specifically, it unleashes the veiled challenges as well as success stories of select women entrepreneurs of a developing country to bridge the gap between entrepreneurship theory and practice. It aims to provide directions to the policymakers, educationists, society and families in creating a conducive environment that is essential for the success of women entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach: With a qualitative case study approach, data were collected from Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state which has a maximum number of women entrepreneurs. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to explore the supportive as well as challenging dimensions of their entrepreneurial journey. Findings: Content analysis of the interview transcripts indicated that successful entrepreneurs are opportunity-driven and they focus on innovation, service, generation of wealth and employment. Support from family, especially from fathers or husbands, is as important as the entrepreneurial drive, skills and abilities of an entrepreneur. Success for them is being happy, thriving work, having a happy family, having a great work-life balance and the satisfaction to have served society apart from being independent (economically/ financially). Among India’s societal and cultural realities, women have to conquer many hurdles (both implicit and explicit) in their way concerning the societal attitudes toward women stepping out of the home boundaries and traditional gender role expectations. The silver line is societal attitudes are changing, especially in urban India. There are enough support and encouragement from the family, which helps these women pursue their passion and eventually become a successful leader. Social implications: The success stories of women will bring a wave of positive developmental change in India by fostering respect for women in a male-dominated society and flashing the importance of women’s entrepreneurship. Originality/value: This paper provides a new examination of women entrepreneurs that significantly further the debate about the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, especially in entrepreneurship in an emerging economy context like India. Apart from the deterrents, it aims to highlight the enablers and motivations to choose this unconventional profession.

This study explores how highly educated Indian women entrepreneurs prioritize and manage the work and family role boundaries. It also explores whether boundary management strategies vary based on motherhood and business stages. We explored these issues by interviewing twenty-five financially successful well-educated women entrepreneurs from five cities (Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Cochin) in India. We found that the mothers with younger children and entrepreneurs in the early stages of the business preferred to integrate the work and family roles than to set a clear boundary between the roles, using various boundary management tactics to achieve work-life balance (WLB). They attempted to minimize imbalance by creating a resource pool, flexible scheduling, working fewer hours, and preferring workplace proximity. Social support seemed to be essential to reconcile the multiple role demands. According to the business and motherhood stages, significant differences were observed in the type and level of WLB issues women face. The study provides recommendations for successful reconciliation between the work and non-work lives in the Indian context. In this culturally unique context, while access to institutional support for women entrepreneurs is meager, any effort to help them reconcile their work and family demands will be helpful.

Purpose: This paper aims to organize the existing empirical research on women entrepreneurs (WEs) in India, highlight the research areas that have not received attention and present opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed on 74 scholarly articles focusing on WEs in India and published between 1993 and 2020. This review is structured around the 4W framework used in previous SLRs. The review is directed by the following foci: what do we know about academic research on WEs in India? How were these studies conducted? Where were these studies conducted? Why should academicians and practitioners consider WE research? Findings: The authors arrived at four main themes underlying the empirical research on WEs: success factors for WEs, challenges faced by WEs, factors that attract and motivate WEs and performance measures for WEs. While challenges and success factors have received attention from researchers, there is a distinct lack of papers on factors that attract or motivate WE and performance measures. The main gaps identified were a lack of theoretical basis in studies, reliance on interview and survey-based methodology and a lack of context-specific studies. Research limitations/implications: The findings of this review are limited to WEs operating in India. Only Scopus-indexed journals listed in the Australian Business Dean's Council Journal Quality List (ABDC JQL) were included in the final SLR list. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to use a systematic approach to provide a detailed account of the state of the literature on women's entrepreneurship research in India.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the entrepreneurial journey of select women entrepreneurs from South India to provide qualitative insights into the factors influencing their career choice (to become and continue as an entrepreneur) and to identify the drivers of their growth and well-being. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data from 35 women entrepreneurs in the micro, small and medium enterprises sectors of Tamil Nadu, India. Data were content analyzed using NVivo 12. Findings: Qualitative content analysis identified three broad themes and several sub-themes to suggest a conceptual framework reflecting the possible relationships among them. Women entrepreneurs’ career choice, the growth of their ventures and their well-being were found to be significantly driven by a blend of personal attributes, strong family support and institutional support. Practical implications: The findings will help the government to provide appropriate institutional support with customized initiatives and incentives to encourage women-owned tiny and small businesses to grow faster. Appropriate personality development programs and skills training will aid their growth. Originality/value: This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing real-life insights from women entrepreneurs from an emerging economy context, especially from Tamil Nadu, which has the highest number of women entrepreneurs in India.