How can gender focused enterprises overcome deep-rooted cultural challenges?

If you are a woman attending a business conference or event, you will, more often than not, find yourself in the minority amidst a large number of men. I have found that this is a common occurrence regardless of the theme of the event or the city where it is taking place. So it was heartening to walk into UnLtd India and GSEN’s annual social entrepreneurship summit in Mumbai last month to find as many if not more women attendees. Many of these were investees of Unltd India, an incubator for social entrepreneurs.

A large proportion of UnLtd India’s investees are either women or have a gender focus in their work (making them the ideal partner on our Gender and Inclusive Business mini-series this month). From setting up a taxi service that trains and employs underprivileged women as taxi drivers to encouraging girls to take up sports as an alternative career, these entrepreneurs are breaking new ground in empowering women to enter traditionally male dominated spaces in India.

Women in India, as in most other developing countries, are grossly underrepresented in all aspects of public and economic life (not just at business events!). According to the latest World Bank statistics, the female share in non-agricultural wage employment is 19%. In Agriculture, it is 59.8% and yet women continue to earn much less than men for equivalent agricultural work. Women occupy only 12% of the seats in national parliament. Vast inequalities exist in access to education, health care, physical and financial resources and opportunities in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres. This ‘invisible’ existence of women, particularly those living at the base of the pyramid, is accepted by a majority of the population as the norm.

It is this cultural context within which they work that these entrepreneurs identify to be the biggest challenge to scaling their impact. Deep seated notions of patriarchy throw up obstacles for enterprises in their work with women as well as for women founders of enterprises in running their businesses.

Enterprises engaging underprivileged women as employees have found that these women often lack self esteem and confidence. They suffer abuse in their homes; take long periods of time off to look after family members and are simply unaware of their basic rights. Additionally, for those enterprises bringing women into ‘male spaces’, they have to deal with infrastructure that is not geared to female participation. For example, a major challenge for Sakha, a taxi service that employs female drivers in New Delhi, has been the lack of public toilet facilities for women.

While the women investees of UnLtd India are more privileged than the beneficiaries spoken of above, they have to tackle their own set of challenges because of the prevailing attitude towards women in business. Access to finance for women entrepreneurs is a particular issue. Meenu Vadera, the inspirational founder of Sakha, illustrated this by narrating a story about how the company was refused a loan to buy a car by a leading Indian bank because the female company Director who signed the guarantee was divorced and, therefore, wasn’t backed by a male breadwinner in the family.

All the entrepreneurs I spoke to admitted that it was impossible to overcome cultural challenges single-handedly and that changing the prevailing norms would take decades. In order to have a positive impact, they are having to adopt strategies that provide much more than just skills or employment. Three strategies stood out:

1. Providing ‘soft skills’ training and awareness to women beneficiaries.

Acquiring the basic skills for employment as well as learning to communicate effectively, understanding personal grooming and becoming aware of their rights in the home and the family help build self worth and confidence and ensure that the women are more likely to work more efficiently and stay in long term employment. Sakha put their new women employees through a training programme which focuses on personal strengthening and awareness of rights, with only a third of the curriculum focusing on driving skills.

2. Ensuring flexibility.

In order to retain their employees, enterprises have to recognize that the women do a disproportionate amount of work at home and often have to take absences from work to look after extended family members. Many enterprises allow flexibility of work timings and some even hire additional employees to cover for those going on leave.

3. Improving awareness around the need for women’s empowerment in local communities.

Many enterprises conduct awareness workshops in the communities where their beneficiaries live and work. This helps change the attitudes towards the beneficiaries and, in turn, impacts the business positively as people are more likely to engage their services.

All of these strategies require investing extra time and resource, making it difficult to run financially viable enterprises. The entrepreneurs were all in agreement, however, that the work they are doing is transformative and, therefore, that the extra expense is necessary.

This demonstrates the importance of programmes that are providing specific support to enterprises that focus on improving the lives of women and girls living at the base of the pyramid. To learn about the work these programmes are doing and for more insights from women-focused entrepreneurs, read our Gender and Inclusive Business mini-series.