Entrepreneurs are born and made. The development of entrepreneurship has proven in the world its validity as a strategy to overcome poverty and fully develop the individuals and families who participate in projects of this type.
The enterprising woman, characterized by an active and positive spirit, which leads her to take risks and commitments, challenges the market and the system, gets up and starts over, assuming the inconveniences and failures as learning. It is this woman who has bravely managed to face the terrible crisis that we experienced so few years ago.
Self-employment is, in many cases, the only opportunity many women have to earn a subsistence income, as paid employment is out of their reach.
The development of entrepreneurial activities is not easy and they once again demonstrate the ingenuity and capacity for work that these women, some as the sole breadwinners for their families, demonstrate when overcoming the multiple difficulties they face.
Some of the barriers and obstacles related to gender can be summarized as:
- Role barriers: They are expected to have another role and not the one that implies their participation in the public space and in the business world.Social and cultural barriers: Negative attitudes towards women who participate in businesses, lack of family support, few mobility possibilities Educational barriers: lack of technical preparation or insufficient knowledge, incomplete and partial education, limited access to training due to the myriad of family responsibilities Occupational barriers: fewer opportunities for some trades and for formal employment Legal barriers and infrastructure: problems of access to credit, to land, to support services, to information.
These barriers, some of which today are slowly heading towards changes that tend to reduce them, have strong socio-cultural roots, which is a long-term process, in which the entire society, men and women, must get involved and participate..
Women who lead companies and micro-enterprises cannot be thought of in isolation from the economic and social context in which they operate. Social values, such as the undervaluation of the economic role of women, stereotypes based on sex, limited access of women to certain types of vocational training, policies and legislation, have a considerable impact on the conditions of Creation, Survival and Growth of productive enterprises led by women.
From government areas, at different levels, national, provincial and municipal, in conjunction with civil society organizations, gender policies should be adjusted, strategically dismantling watertight compartments, focusing efforts on socializing power, as to achieve a commitment with the women who are represented, monitoring actions, reviewing and deciding development strategies that take into account the needs of women and their efforts to overcome poverty, reviewing laws and administrative practices, constantly raising awareness and training in the gender perspective and working with a real articulation of the areas, so that this attitude and the actions that derive from them,are consistently sustained and truly promoters of human development in pursuit of equality between men and women.
