Technical skills to women in agriculture and training in planning and administration could raise GDP by 2%: NCW Chairperson

Ms. Lalitha Kumaramangalam, Chairperson, National Commission for Women, has underlined the need for imparting training to women in planning and administration as also provision of technical skills to women engaged in agriculture. If this was carried out in right earnest, the country GDP would rise by two percentage points, she said while inaugurating a seminar on Accelerating Women Entrepreneurship, organised by FICCI in partnership with Intel India. She called for more representation of professional women in the boards of companies and said there was a need to look at entrepreneurship beyond the traditional sense. Women must take to mentoring other women which should become part of the ecosystem. Ms Kumaramangalam said that women suffer from poor asset ownership and fare poorly on the awareness levels of their legal rights. Even those who are aware, do not demand their rights vociferously, she pointed out. She also argued for providing flexi-time to women by their employers as it has been observed that those between the ages of 30-45 drop out of employment because of family responsibilities and because of the fact that the age group represents the reproductive years of their life. In her key note address, Ms. Anubha Grover, Head - Supplier Diversity, Intel India, said that the role corporates could play in accelerating women entrepreneurship could be gleaned from the three-pronged approach adopted by Intel. These are commitment from the top leadership; establishment of an entrepreneurship framework encompassing supply chain, community and advocacy; and execution which includes promoting women-owned business in the supply chain and connecting such entrepreneurs with businesses opportunities. Ms. Deepa Kathykeyan, Director, Athena Infonomics, said that the Roadmap was aimed at creating an enabling environment for women enterprise development through policy reforms; build institutional capacity for women enterprise development through training, advisory services and business networks and develop tools and online solutions for women entrepreneurs.

She said the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in NCR highlight the nature of the ecosystem in which they operate. Women in NCR primarily face challenges that are socio-cultural as well as institutional in nature. This is in contrast to Bangalore, where women were constrained largely by institutional factors, after having overcome gender and socio-cultural challenges.

'Roadmap 2020 and Beyond' advocates transformational change in empowering women by providing them with economic tools and access to resources, greater voice, confidence and independence to lead their lives as successful entrepreneurs.

The way forward, she said, was to track and measure women entrepreneurship, their contribution to economy, employment and growth, institute voucher schemes to subsidise fees for hiring professional consultants in such areas as finance, technology, procurement and legal matters, create a unified code for credit application and processing of SME loans, create an online supplier development portal that will provide a single point of access to help women entrepreneurs with access to corporate, Government and international markets, offer online assessment tools for estimating firm-specific technology requirements, offer self-assessment tools in MSME websites to identify training needs and estimate their cost, create a state, regional and/or national network of strong women business owners who can serve as role models, and engage participation by high-profile men who can champion the cause.

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