Now-a-days, all over the world entrepreneurship has been regarded as one of the prominent and emerging career choices for both urban and rural women population, especially in developing economies. In today’s digitized era, female owned business enterprises are growing at a geometrical progression, because getting involved into entrepreneurial activities, women empowerment is well evidenced. There have been a number of academic and scholarly research studies conducted that specifically advocated the promotion of women entrepreneurship as a means of eradicating poverty in developing and under developed countries. Entrepreneurship is all about opportunity recognition, innovation and proactiveness. Across the globe, women entrepreneurs are significantly growing day by day and their numbers have been doubled compared to the last decades. In Bangladesh, rural-urban and educated-uneducated women are entering into the domain of entrepreneurship and this growth phenomenon has been intrinsically fuelled by the advent of information technology (IT), through which especially tech savvy women population can easily promote and market their entrepreneurial products with the help of social media, precisely ‘Facebook’. Very recently, US based entrepreneurial research institute, Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) has published their GEI (Global Entrepreneurship Index) 2018 report, where Bangladesh has been ranked as 134th position with 12% GEI.  

Till date, Bangladeshi government has already adopted multiple initiatives to boost up the women entrepreneurial activities with the help of Bangladesh Bank and other financial organizations. According to the joint study conducted by Bangladesh Bank (BB) and Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD), in the period of 2010-2013 the amount of women entrepreneurial loan disbursement rose to 6,670 crore taka which has been well distributed to 57,000 women owned business enterprises along with proper financial guidance of BB. Similarly, another research report of Bangladesh Bank exhibited that the number of women entrepreneurs has dramatically increased in 2013 by 183% compared to 2010. As of now, although a number of programmes and directives have been taken to facilitate women entrepreneurial activities, yet women entrepreneurial ecosystem is not well addressed, which is very much significant to analyse and understand if we really want to strategically enhance the overall performance of women entrepreneurial population.

Senior Director of World Bank group, Ms. Anabel Gonzalez articulated that— “By enabling innovative companies to launch and scale their business ideas, we aim to stimulate economic growth and job creation, and identify and scale effective solutions to critical development issues, like access to clean energy and water, health services and education”

Women entrepreneurial ecosystem consists of complex elements of socio-economic contextual level in which women entrepreneurs grow up, extend their entrepreneurial activities and start-up their new entrepreneurial ventures within a given business platform, where relevant and applicable entrepreneurial knowledge exists that is required to be extracted by the individual women entrepreneurs for enhancing their venture growth. The ultimate nature of entrepreneurial ecosystem is well perceived as an opportunity recognition driven rather than necessity driven. In the ecosystem, nascent and new potential women entrepreneurs usually tend to grab each conceived entrepreneurial opportunity. Women entrepreneurial ecosystem technically comprises of several critical components, in which women entrepreneurs are acting as an agent. Pronouncedly women entrepreneurial people reinforce the ecosystem. Institutional supports and directives are considered as other rudimentary components of the women entrepreneurial ecosystem. Economic and financial institutions are salient in creating ease path for ensuring access to finance for nascent and struggling women entrepreneurs. Institutions explicitly strengthen and foster both entrepreneurial activities and entrepreneurial talents in an ecosystem. Besides these components, women entrepreneurial ecosystem is being buttressed by some paramount pillars that are the basis of upholding and underpinning the entrepreneurial activities. Among these pillars, one of the most pivotal pillars is the ‘Opportunity perception and recognition’ that is inter-correlated with the market size and its structural form. Overall market ecosystem facilitates this opportunity perception and recognition phenomenon for women entrepreneurs, in which potential entrepreneurs could straightforwardly identify the untapped entrepreneurial opportunity. For example, in Bangladesh entrepreneurial market ecosystem has literally expedited the opportunity recognition for the apps based entrepreneurial venture of ‘Pathao-Moving Bangladesh’. Since the advancement of ‘Facebook’ in our community, many graduate and non-graduate women entrepreneurs have leveraged the ‘FB’ platform to promote their products and services at almost zero cost—inferring the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Second influential pillar is to have the necessary start-up skills to launch a new start-up entrepreneurial venture by the women.

A number of entrepreneurial research studies have empirically validated the need for required start-up skills that could be acquired from previous workplace or in a trial-error basis within the current business set-up. Third pillar is having the minimum level of risk acceptance mentality of women entrepreneurial population. ‘Fear of Failure’ is inherently evidenced as a dominant hindrance for fostering business activities of women population. Social and market networking plays a supreme role in women entrepreneurial ecosystem, through which women can remain more connected with all entrepreneurial stakeholders and market information. The more connected women entrepreneurs, the more business growth they tend to obtain. Networking, as one of the most influential pillars, enables women entrepreneurs work on their business activities in a more informative way than ever before. Another pillar is the cultural support through which women are to be given more social dignity and acceptance in the patriarchal social system. Technology adoption and absorption has become almost prerequisite to a significant extent for starting up women administered business venture. As we live in the knowledge enabled tech based economy, information and communication technologies (ICT) has helped women entrepreneurs to transform their product and business domain in an unprecedented way. Thus, diffusion of tech based novel knowledge and having the required capacity to leverage it, have become phenomenally fundamental for women entrepreneurs. In addition, human capital is another pillar of women entrepreneurial ecosystem that does ease and accelerate entrepreneurial activities in a smoother way. It has been indispensable for women business owners to have highly experienced and value added human employee in her enterprise for future business growth that could be followed by both organic and sustainable entrepreneurial flourishing. Other noticeable pillars are product and process innovation that have been highly required for potential business growth in women entrepreneurial society.

With the passage of time, Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs are seen as an increasing entrepreneurial population in both urban and rural areas. But the most talked about question is could their entrepreneurial venture survive in the long run—reflecting the issues of sustainability in venture growth process. Therefore, it is high time to emphasize on the overall structure of the women entrepreneurial ecosystem in order to facilitate their entrepreneurial activities as a platform of women empowerment in Bangladesh.   

The writer is a MBA student, School of Management (SOM)

Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand.

Email: [email protected]