Chances and Limitations of Women’s Entrepreneurship as a Means of Women’s Empowerment in Northeast India

Abstract: Gender inequality and oppression of women are pressing issues in all countries around the world. Thus the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations declares gender equality as one of the Sustainable Development Goals. Many international organisations have developed projects that aim at supporting women’s entrepreneurship to empower women. Several scholars have written about the relationship of women’s entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment with mixed results regarding its potential for empowering women. In the Northeast Indian context the current academic literature is clearly favouring women’s entrepreneurship as a means of women’s empowerment, often without precisely conceptualising women’s empowerment. This study aims at shedding some light on whether entrepreneurship is beneficial for women empowerment. Next to a review of the current academic literature, qualitative interviews with women entrepreneurs in Northeast India as well as a focus group interview and expert interviews have been undertaken to gain further insights in this complex relationship. The findings show that there are indeed empowering elements in women’s entrepreneurship, but also that the complexity of women’s empowerment cannot sufficiently be addressed by solely focusing on supporting women entrepreneurs. Hence this study contributes to the ongoing discourse about the relationship of entrepreneurship and women empowerment in general and specifically questions the often very positive stance of scholars towards entrepreneurship as a means of women empowerment in the Northeast Indian context.