I hate being referred to as a woman entrepreneur. I am an entrepreneur, and my gender doesn’t change anything. 

An entrepreneur is critical for economic development and keeping economies vibrant and thriving. An entrepreneur is a job creator who provides opportunities and livelihoods. What has it got to do with gender? Why do we use the word “entrepreneur” for men and refer to female founders as “woman entrepreneurs”? Is it the societal stereotype that slots women into categories rather than looking at their contribution to development? 

It certainly has little to do with the inherent capacity of women. Women are instinctively entrepreneurial and possess all the qualities that any successful business person should have. So, why are women business owners referred to in gendered language?

There are two main reasons. Firstly, women starting entrepreneurial ventures are a small proportion of the overall ecosystem. And secondly, many of these women take the road less travelled, and start and stay small. 

In India, only 22 percent of all enterprises in the country are women-owned. Women own 20 percent of MSMEs. And 69 percent of these are solo entrepreneurs with a home-based business employing between one and five people. The percentage of scalable enterprises owned by women is less than 1 percent. 

These are depressing data points and precisely why the focus is placed on gender too. Limited encouragement and support for women to take a path of entrepreneurship, difficulty in raising funds, and the fact that often women lack confidence, mostly due to societal pressures and domestic responsibilities that men might not face, are responsible for the gender disparity.

To put things into perspective, only 18 percent of Indian unicorns have at least one female founder. In 2022, $3.9 billion of funding went to Indian start-ups led by female founders, representing just 11 percent of the total funds raised.

There has been a lot of effort to improve the participation of women in the labour force and corporate offices, and even if some argue that the pace of change is not fast enough, change is definitely afoot. However, in comparison, while there has been some discussion on improving the entrepreneurship ecosystem and making it easier for women to enter, raise money and scale up, we are far behind. 

So how do we un-gender entrepreneurship and look at all entrepreneurs through the same lens rather than categorising them by gender? Funding and development sector organisations and foundations must make this a critical part of their agenda and focus with a clear strategy and KPIs to measure success. 

Raah Foundation, the organisation I co-founded, is on a mission to facilitate at least 5,000 rural women entrepreneurs by 2030. They are provided with handholding services, peer learning, mentoring opportunities, best practice sharing, digital and financial skills as well as funds infusion for scaling up. We exit when women scale up and have the confidence to grow on their own. Interestingly many of these women have never been to school and are proving that grit, determination and an organised approach can be valuable characteristics. The sheer number of women starting, successfully running and scaling up their micro-enterprises has helped us to un-gender the term entrepreneur. Currently, 1,200 women are successfully managing and growing their entrepreneurial ventures and each year a cohort of 400 to 500 new women join the tribe and are breaking barriers, changing norms and making women businesses mainstream. 

To change the paradigms on the national and global stage, we need work at three levels: the women’s local level, at a structural level and at policy level. 

Creating collectives and collaboratives at a local level is important as it creates role models and has a demonstration effect. Collectives are small clusters of women business owners either from the same location or with similar business interests and a common goal of supporting, mentoring and scaling businesses. These collectives focus on gap identification and regular training on different aspects of managing and growing the businesses. We have seen marked improvements in the confidence levels of women after every training programme as this facilitates learning from each other as well as from experts. Women themselves or the community groups take a lead in forming and running these collectives and have the mandate of increasing the membership each year. 

At a structural level, making it easier for women to raise funds is important. This can happen when women invest in other women, and when women-centric funds are launched that not only fund the businesses but also invest in women and enhance their opportunities through capacity building. 

At a policy level, there needs to be recognition of businesses run by women, however small they are. Adding a woman dimension in SME policies and studying the impact of such measures on the success of women-owned businesses periodically is important. Considering and reporting on the role women play in the economy is also key, which requires strengthening the monitoring and evaluation frameworks with respect to the contribution of women entrepreneurs as well as the impact of policies on their growth and scaling. 

Small, medium and large enterprises require different customised training and support and each of the above levels must incorporate this. 

When the tribe of women taking the path less travelled increases, that path will become common and this will contribute to un-gendering. A large number of confident women with high self-esteem will contribute more effectively to economic, social and environmental sustainability. Let’s together un-gender entrepreneurship.