Employment Constraints of Self Employed Women

Abstract

Workers in the informal sector typically earn less income, have unstable income, and don’t have access to basic protections and services, at least which seems to be the overall conclusion of research in development and transition economies. Informal businesses also lack the potential for growth, trapping employees in menial jobs indefinitely. On the other hand the informal sector can allow a large proportion of the population to escape extreme poverty and earn an income that is satisfactory for survival. This paper highlights the hurdles faced by the self employed women in the work place. The study which has been conducted in Tirunelveli district among 500 self employed women who work in both farm and non farm sector has encountered certain problems in the work place. The researcher used percentage analysis and Factor analysis to interpret the results. The work place constraints are located on the basis of factor analysis and it is found that the major constraints are Infrastructure Constraint (41.16%), Knowledge Constraint (32.52%), Employment constraint (13.88%) and financial constraint (12.43%). It is inferred that the infrastructure is the basic need while finance is a manageable constraints as far as the self employed women are concerned. It is noted that the self employed women need to put lot of efforts and work for long times to be successful in their venture.  Anemia is the major health problem which prevails among the self employed women that needs to be eradicated by giving proper awareness along with health measures. The economic status of the women is now accepted as an indicator of a society’s stage of development and therefore it becomes imperative for the government to frame policies for development of entrepreneurship among women.