Encouraging women entrepreneurship

Suraiya Rahman wants to start a vegetable preservation business. However, she does not have any professional training on vegetable preservation.

Suraiya Rahman told this writer, “I want to work on vegetable preservation but I have already asked many organisations on how to get training about vegetable preservation. No organisation has been able to give me any information regarding the matter. My question is what are the women entrepreneur’s associations doing? They are not serious about us”.

Not only information on training but the biggest problem women entrepreneurs are facing is a lack of capital. In this case, the prevailing rules or ideas in the society are playing a big role. Women usually cannot start their careers in the same way that a man can.

Family members do not give too much importance towards their careers. After completing his education, a man has the freedom to decide whether to work at a salaried job or start a business. But women in general cannot make such decisions when they finish their education and start their careers. If a man wants to do business, his parents often help him financially.

Men can begin their careers in family businesses. They even do business with inherited property. A woman, on the other hand, is denied all of these opportunities. In general, families prioritize marrying off women after they have completed their studies or when they are in the middle of their studies. Women rarely begin working after completing their education. Women's participation in starting a business is extremely low. The issue of social backwardness is to blame in this case as well.

Nowadays, a number of unmarried women are trying to become entrepreneurs after completing their education. Many women start businesses to become self-sufficient after marriage or to provide for their families. In this case, many women take capital from their husbands. Some work by borrowing money from known relatives or friends. Some start a business by saving money from working in jobs or otherwise. Despite the emphasis on equal opportunities for boys and girls in the family, women continue to lag behind in property inheritance. According to statistics, only 4% of women in our country inherit property. As a result, many organisations are now campaigning for women to be able to inherit property. Both Islam and the state have granted women the right to own property. Even so, the issue of women inheriting property has made little progress.

Despite this, women feel the need for bank loans to expand the scope of their businesses or to keep them running. That is why bank loans are so crucial. Bank loans and property inheritance are difficult to obtain for women, which men find much easier.

The reality is that when a woman first starts working as an entrepreneur, she is so focused on her products that she frequently overlooks preparing the necessary business documents. When her company expands and she requires a loan, she spends so much time processing the loan that she often misses out on the loan. This necessitates that the business be started with proper rules from the start.

In general, they believe what they hear from sources such as newspapers and at various seminars and believe that if they go to a bank or the government, they will be able to obtain loans on favorable terms. In reality, the situation is more complicated. There are several rules to follow when applying for a bank loan. Women entrepreneurs anticipate receiving loans at low interest rates and as per their need. In reality, this is not the case. A variety of papers and documents are required to obtain a bank loan.

The bank asks for the financial statements of a person or customer to verify if they can repay the loan on time or not and how much they can borrow such that they can repay the loan. Women entrepreneurs do not prepare these documents oftentimes. The bank collects information about its sales and profits to get an idea of the customer's business. The bank collects information from the company's purchase and sale receipts. If the customer has not prepared their business statement, income-expenditure statement, and cash flow account before applying for the loan, the bank will prepare them and take the customer's signature there. Furthermore, if the customer has a loan with another bank, the bank collects the statement and proof of installment payment. This is because the customer's mindset about debt repayment can be deduced from their past record of loan repayment.

The customer's investment plan, the amount of current goods, debtor and creditor details, the amount of debts, whether there is a seasonal effect on the business, and so on are all taken into account. While preparing the list of goods and debtors, whether there are canceled or overdue goods and customs dues are also taken into consideration.

A risk remains as to whether the customer will be able to repay the bank loan. Many times, the customer does not want to repay the loan despite being able to afford it. Others frequently lose money in business. For all these reasons, the bank tries to collect the debt by keeping the borrower under supervision. In the absence of this, the bank is frequently forced to resort to the law. The bank obtains the documents from the customer in order to complete the legal work without difficulty.

Although some banks offer no-deposit loans, it can be seen that the rule may have been in operation for some time before being stopped. Besides, two guarantors are required in the case of unsecured loans. For this, the borrower has to fix the guarantor as per the bank policy. The first thing to do is open a business account at a bank, and the transaction should be active.

The loan process can be started after at least six months or one year. In this case, if you go to the bank, the officials there will help. This is how the documents have to be prepared and submitted. If the women entrepreneurs know the issues from the beginning and work, then there should be no problem getting loans, say the concerned people.

But even if they prepare the right documents, getting the guarantor and submitting the document is the most difficult task for them. In this case, the bank cannot assist them in any way. What about women entrepreneurs? Because no one wants to be their guarantor, and since they do not inherit land, it is very difficult for them to submit land deeds.

In this case, what are the organisations working with women entrepreneurs doing? Speaking to a few women entrepreneurs, it is known that the organisations do not help them much in terms of loans. They don't even give them proper training on how they can easily get bank loans or other facilities if they organize businesses. So what do they do? It is known that they usually train them on how to work with conventional products. It is not enough for them.

Women are doing business many kinds of problems are faced. For this reason, they are not able to work properly. From the beginning, rules and regulations should be maintained and business papers should be managed properly. The organisations should help them to understand bank loan statements. Women entrepreneurs will be more successful if organisations help them this way.     

Apart from organizing women entrepreneurs, the organisations have a wide range of functions. They need to keep their entrepreneurs updated, stay ahead of time, and provide training on information technology. What is the market demand for the products that entrepreneurs are working on? Training is needed on how to make them better and attract customers. Many people cannot decide how to start a business. They can get assistance in this from organisations. They can take some initiative in determining what kind of potential individual entrepreneurs have. Also the entrepreneurs can be made aware of how much of the products they work with is under their control.

They can be trained on how to procure the products, quality control of the products, marketing of the products etc. If someone wants to do vegetable-fruit preservation, or work with new types of products, how to do it, whether there are opportunities in the country, and even if there is no opportunity, organisations can work to prepare them. For this reason, establishing an institute to help entrepreneurs in various ways can be a huge undertaking. Organisations can build such institutes and if there are training as well as research opportunities, entrepreneurs can work easily. Directors of organisations can be guarantors for bank loans. They can convince banks to lend to entrepreneurs in various ways. Organisations should discuss about the women, on how to inherit their property. Organisations can mobilize the society, after the women have finished studies, they can start doing businesses. Organisations need to raise their voice for the change of society about women entrepreneurs.    

At this time, the topic of women entrepreneurship is highly relevant all over the world. Various donor agencies are interested in this and a large amount of assistance is available. For this reason, many people here are interested in working with women entrepreneurs. Many are building many organisations.

Monitoring or accountability of how much they are actually doing for entrepreneurs is sorely lacking. It has been alleged that many people are taking advantage of this by using party power to build organisations overnight.

Promoting women entrepreneurs through international seminars or summits is benefiting the organizers more than helping actual women. Entrepreneurs get deceived by the splendor of this type of organisation but do not understand the real issues at play here. In this case, if there is sincerity and vigilance by the government and concerned circles, the struggling and promising entrepreneurs will benefit instead of the lavish and well-to-do entrepreneurs.

The writer is a freelance columnist. She can be contacted at [email protected]