Pushing for progress for female entrepreneurs this Women's Day

International Women's Day was celebrated on Thursday to bring to light their cultural and economic achievements. The day also saw several women calling out for more gender parity.

Several events were organised all over the world, and important issues such as gender diversity, workplace harassment, equal pay among other things were discussed.

Saluting the courage of women, here is what four female entrepreneurs had to say:

"I think this Women's Day should be about working hard and truly reaching your potential to set an example for the generations to follow. Our goal should be to make our leaders, parents and mentors feel proud and see that all their years of fighting and standing up for our rights has paid off. We should not throw away the opportunities and freedom being given to us and work towards making a change," said co-founder and CEO, Bent Chair, Natasha Jain.

CashKaro Co-founder Swati Bhargava called out to all women to fight harder and be stronger.

"Another International Women's Day is here! A day to celebrate the changes which were fought for, to recognise women's achievements throughout the history and also to recognise the gaps which need to be filled. Yes! Women have come a long way and yes, women are coming out with flying colours in all possible fields. Gone are the days when women were considered submissive and no match for the all-powerful male. However, there is still and always be an invisible gap that is difficult to bridge in our society. Let's go a step further from here. Let's make some minor tweaks for a greater mindset change," Bhargava said.

"One thing I've learned from my entrepreneurial journey is this, at the end of the day, your work should speak for itself and at that point, it doesn't matter whether you are a man or a woman! Although I see a lot of change in the environment for women entrepreneurs from 2011 when I started. However this also gives us an amazing opportunity to strive to be better, fight harder, be stronger and bring to life the incredible feats a woman is capable of," she added.

Meanwhile, JobsForHer CEO Neha Bagaria believes that there are several internal barriers that women need to cross in order to be successful.

"Women can unlock their greatness to achieve their full potential. In order to do so, there are several internal barriers that women need to cross such as time-management, guilt-management, and fear-management. We need to realize that it is possible to manage a family as well as work if you have prioritised your goals in both spaces. We need to stop feeling guilty about not being at home when we're at work and about not being at work when we're at home while realizing that most times, perfection is the enemy of the good," she said.

"Having a mentor can be extremely beneficial to get the support and advice needed to grow and build networks. Mentored women will learn to articulate their ambitions to promote and negotiate for themselves and will work towards understanding the gaps within their skills early on in their careers, thus hopefully remaining empowered and successful," Bagaria added.

Carmesi CEO Tanvi Johri, on the other hand, believes that the time is now for women to take over.

"The participation of women in the global workforce has been on a steady rise, which is an extremely promising sign. Many times in our professional lives, women find themselves facing the burdens of societal expectations, the very fear of being discriminated against and not being taken seriously, and the pressure to exceed in a heavily male-dominated environment. But every day, we see women overcoming these challenges, and emerging out winners in their own fields. Women like Falguni Nayyar, Richa Kar, Shradha Sharma and so many others having done such stupendous job in building successful enterprises has only proved that's it's time for women to take over," she noted.