A Study on Entrepreneurial Motivation and Challenges faced by Women Entrepreneurs in Thanjavur District

Objectives: This paper aims at making an empirical analysis on such factors that play a role of motivator in enhancing the aspect of entrepreneurship among women, with special reference to Thanjavur district. This paper also focuses attention on the challenges faced by women in the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Methods/Analysis: Descriptive research design was used. The primary data was collected from 400 samples from rural and urban areas of Thanjavur district using a structured questionnaire with the help of survey and snow ball sampling method. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. Findings: The result of the motivational factors indicates that financial need motivates women to the highest degree to become entrepreneurs compared to other factors like supplementing the family income, improve the social status, etc. Further, the study has used Rotated component Matrix to factorise the important motivational factors. The result of the Rotated component matrix reveals that the twelve variables were subjected to extraction method and finally the five factors were analysed. The first factor reveals that women have taken up this venture as a pass time activity and continue in the family occupation. Further the study also reveals that they have taken up such entrepreneurial venture to be economically independent and to improve the social status. The result also suggested that unfavourable market conditions and the stringent legal and regulatory conditions have been more challenging than the other problems. Finally the result shows that the women entrepreneurs have faced lot of personal challenges due to lack of information and imbalance between work and family life. Applications/Improvements: Thanjavur district has faced failures in the agricultural sector in the recent past due to failures in monsoon, water scarcity, etc. This has caused large scale unemployment and migration to urban industry creating huge quantum of socio, economic and cultural problems in the district. With mushrooming higher educational institutions in the district coupled with a high female literacy rate of 76.50 per cent (as per 2011 census), the researchers aim to concentrate on women entrepreneurship development, resulting in alternative sources of income for the district.Keywords: Discrimination, Descriptive Statistics, Entrepreneurial Development, Factor Analysis, Gender