Women Entrepreneurs in MSMEs Need Policy Push: Experts

Women account for nearly 20 per cent of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), contributing more than Rs 50 lakh crore to the GDP. In higher education, the gross enrolment ratio for girls has increased to 28.5 per cent in 2023, up from just 7.5 per cent in the 1970s. 

Yet, despite these advances, key systemic barriers persist. Women often juggle unpaid care work or are kept out of jobs simply because the system wasn’t built with them in mind.

Speaking at the National Conference on Women Leadership Moonshot: Shaping the Future in New Delhi, organised recently by the Sankala Foundation, changemakers and policymakers argued that it's not just a seat at the table that is needed, but a redesign of the table itself.

Chhavi Rajawat, former sarpanch of Soda village in Rajasthan, challenges the notion of the “glass ceiling”. In rural leadership, the ceiling is often "on the floor", since no one had ever imagined women would be present in those positions to begin with. According to her, true empowerment demands dismantling outdated and ornamental systems that exclude women by default.

From Informal Enterprises to Scalable Startups

Women are making an undeniable mark in grassroots governance and the social sector, with an estimated 14 lakh in local democratic roles and 32 lakh in the social sector ecosystem. But entrepreneurship — particularly in the informal micro-enterprise space — remains an area where women could use a greater policy push.

Seema Arora, Deputy Director-General of the Confederation of Indian Industry, points out that while women lead a majority of of micro enterprises, most remain outside the formal economy. These businesses often fall into what she describes as the “missing middle”. These are organisations that are too big to qualify as self-help groups, but too small to access formal finance and markets.

Arora calls for a government programme tailored specifically to these women entrepreneurs, offering them skilling, credit, and access to supply chains.

Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman IPS officer and former Lt. Governor of Puducherry, believes that women’s unpaid care work deserves recognition as an economic contribution. She suggests that policy support should extend to startups in caregiving sectors like home and elder care. “Every working woman creates another working woman,” she said.

For rural women leaders, Bedi proposes practical interventions such as providing electric scooters to women sarpanches to enhance their mobility and independence. This, she argues, could eventually lead to a shift in social norms.

Barriers And Mindsets

Some challenges are less visible, but still important to address. Debashree Mukherjee, Secretary, Department of Water Resources at the Ministry of Jal Shakti, observed at the women's leadership conference that no woman works as a bus driver in Delhi because buses are not ergonomically designed for those who are shorter than 5 ft 6 in. It is such design-level exclusions that bar women from roles long considered off-limits.

Even India’s thriving startup ecosystem, the third largest in the world, remains skewed. Only 18 per cent of startup founders are women, and the share of funding to women-led tech startups has declined by 25 per cent over the past year.

Out of 24,000 angel investors in India, fewer than 1 per cent are women. Aarti Gupta of FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) described this as a mix of perception, cultural bias, and systemic exclusion.

The need is not just for representation but structural change, from policy design to capital access to role models. As Kanta Singh, Deputy Country Representative of UN Women notes, women in leadership roles bring with them lived experiences that improve outcomes in areas like childcare and maternal health. Their participation isn’t just symbolic; it’s strategic.

Rachna Ahuja, an entrpreneaur in the electric vehincle space and Chairman of Ingar Electronics told The Secretariat that she believes women should lead from the front in driving clean energy innovation.

“We can be involved on a larger scale if the government sanctions easy loans at lower interest rates for women entrepreneurs,” she said. She called for dedicated industrial zones, faster loan approvals with minimal paperwork, and stronger infrastructure for EV adoption. “Women always work for social welfare" she added. They need a bigger policy boost, she implied. 

The call is clear: A policy push for women entrepreneurs must go beyond tokenism to reshape systems, design inclusive infrastructure, and foster a generation of women leaders ready to scale India’s next economic frontier.