from Nina Rai
Daijiworld Media Network - Udupi (SP)
Udupi, Jan 24: A two-day international conference on “Harnessing the Entrepreneurial Potential of Women for Economic Growth” was organized by the Manipal Institute of Management (MIM) jointly with Asian Centre for Entrepreneurial Initiatives (ASCENT) as knowledge partner, to discuss and deliberate on various issues pertaining to women entrepreneurship development at the MIT campus at Manipal, on Friday Jan 23.
The objectives of the conference were to consider the state-of-the-art entrepreneurship development interventions, address some of the challenges faced by women as entrepreneurs and consider emerging issues that local and global players will need to look into in future. The deliberations on various broad issues faced by women entrepreneurs were held in two parallel sessions viz., one session at MIT AC Seminar Hall and the other at AC Class Room, MIM.
Dr Mary Joseph, director of the School of Management Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technologies delivered key note address on 'Facilitating and deterring factors of women entrepreneurship development" supported by detaied discussions on several issues. She advocated that the issue, 'women enterpreneurship' should be a research topic as about 50% of the world's population comprises of women and the world is shrinking and moving towards becoming a global village.
Women entrepreneurships help women to build their self esteem and contribute to the nation's cause with improved leadership skills, she opined.
Relating to the subject, four groups of researchers presented their papers relating to different topics. The session held at 10 am comprised of a lecture on ‘Harnessing creative energy of women to be entrepreneurs through self employment training' by Anjali and Robin, followed by a lecture on the 'reflection of Manipuri women in entrepreneurial world' in which the suppression of women in Manipur was highlighted. Three more well-researched lecturers were also presented at the session.
The session between 11.30 am and 1 pm saw paper presentations on subjects that discussed about the need to follow a national population policy for achieving better child health and survival, business services to help micro entrepreneurs, socio-cultural problems confronting women entrepreneurs etc.
In the parrellel session between 11.30 am to 1 pm, two presentations relating to social-cultural issues on women enterprise development were made. One of the papers emphasized the role of family responsibility, work-life balance, self confidence and operational policies which act as hindrances for the women entrepreneurs.
In an excellent summary of all presentations, it was felt that the core problem lies with the government inactivity to help women entrepreneurs.
In the afternoon session, a key address on women entrepreneurship and micro, small and medium enterprises was delivered by Prof Rajkumar Phate, followed by a lecture by RUDSET director S R Janardan on the experiments initiated by the institute for creating self employment opportunities.
The fourth session chaired by Dr Uday Kumar, professor of the University College Mangalore, saw presentations of study reports on self help groups and other topics. Other papers presented on the occasion dealt with micro financing, industry foundation, networking, development issues and concerns and the role of women executives.
The final session was held from 4 to 5.30 pm on the theme, 'Women in micro, small and medium enterprises'. In the introductory remarks, Nandagopal who chaired the session, spoke on event business crisis, cash crisis, delegation crisis, leadership crisis, proprietor crisis and management recession crisis. Other speakers dealt with pricing dilemma, institutional support, sustainable marketting ability etc.