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Entrepreneurial Women: Attributes and difficulties
To take gender aspects into
account is crucial for women to access whatever opportunities
their environment offers them. Although the access to resources
and knowledge is very important throughout life, it is equality
important to have the will and the time to make use of them. An
entrepreneurial mentality together with an enabling environment
is without doubt a potential for development. Alicia Villanueva - Manuela Ramos GTL/REPEM Peru In our experience, working with women from popular urban and rural sectors, supporting women who are leaders in a “successful” business, we have found that they have an entrepreneurial mentality that manifests itself in a series of entrepreneurial attributes developed with a lot of effort and tenacity. Maybe without that entrepreneurial energy it would have not been possible to take advantage of the least opportunity, however small it might be, for example to have access to a small family credit, to family solidarity, to the trust of neighbours…even access to credits, to markets, to technology, to technical training, to entrepreneurial administration and personal development, all of it with high impact on issues related to self-esteem, leadership and autonomy. Creativity and the capacity to take advantage of opportunities facing them, are attributes that have allowed these women to face unemployment and start a business as well as to innovate and create new products, new strategies, or make use of a credit offer, market offers and to establish strategic alliances. The capacity to take risks, flexibility, learning on the basis of results, are all attributes that can be found on these women and have allowed them to adjust to new situations and take advantage of negative experiences, always with a clear aim, a target to reach. Solidarity, honesty, love for our culture and our identity are also essential attributes in order to think that another economic is possible, an economy that will allow for the development of humanity with equity and justice. These attributes are acquired and developed as part of the daily tasks, but as we have mentioned, they are conditioned by a system of gender inequality that places women in a situation of disadvantage, determining that the paths to follow are different for them. These entrepreneurial women, in order to succeed, had to remove a series of social and cultural difficulties that confined them to domestic tasks and personal limitations like the feeling of insecurity and shyness. They also had to deal with prejudices that are part and parcel of a discriminatory society where their peers, the authorities and society in general did not believe that they could lead a business, a successful enterprise and they had to bear sexist jokes and adjectives. We ask ourselves: To eradicate prejudices and gender barriers is a task only for women? What are we doing to contribute towards change of that oppressor mentality? How to achieve that entrepreneurial women can overcome gender barriers? The efforts towards supporting the entrepreneurial sector put the emphasis on knowing and doing, that is in preparing people so they can have quality production with abilities in their hands or for the handling of simple or sophisticated machines; but there is little or no effort to achieve deep changes at the personal level, in relation to human beings. There are not enough resources dedicated to this type of intervention although that would result in a greater impact in the wellbeing of the population. To invest in supporting women to overcome their feelings of undervalue, of insecurity, to help them to know their rights and make them respect them, is to invest in a promising future. We need public policies that give men and women the same opportunities for their development as human beings, but furthermore, these policies should make special efforts in responding to the real needs of women so that they can overcome the gaps that confine them to situations of disadvantage due to their gender condition. In order to do that, when supporting the women entrepreneurial sector, besides investing in the transfer of technical, administrative and market knowledge, we recommend to develop long term programmes that invest in human beings, in the personal aspects, so that we can contribute towards a sustainable development with equity.
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