Chapter
One
1. Introduction.
This
dissertation examines the role of entrepreneurship in the socio-economic
empowerment of women in Zimbabwe. It seeks to interrogate to what extent entrepreneurship
impacts the socio-economic lives of women in Bulawayo. It will argue that
though this is a single case scenario it is representative of the role of
entrepreneurship in the socio-economic lives of women in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and
Southern Africa as a whole. The significance of entrepreneurship is that for
some time it had the “for the uneducated or for the unskilled” stigma
associated with, like it was a livelihood strategy meant for those who lacked
better things to do however there is a recent paradigm shift which has
bolstered it to the main arena of
viable livelihood strategies making it one of the key drivers of
economic growth even for previously underprivileged groups such as women.
Entrepreneurship has featured prominently in
development discourses on ways to promote women’s social and economic
empowerment. The issue of women’s empowerment in itself has taken centre stage
in the development discourses of sub-Saharan Africa, as much as it has done in other
parts of the developing world. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)(
2012) In 67 countries globally, as at 2012, approximately 126 million women
were starting or running new businesses and 98 million were running already
established businesses while an estimated 48 million female
entrepreneurs and 64 million female established business owners employed one or more people in their
businesses. However, the rate of females engaged in entrepreneurship varies
from 1 % to 40% globally. Thus, women entrepreneurs’ impact on innovation and
job creation differs worldwide (Kelley et al., 2013). In Zimbabwe,
entrepreneurship has been hailed as one way to open the economic arena for
women and the government, through its line ministries such as the Ministry of
Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development (MoWGCD) as well as the
Ministry of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) has stressed the need to
support women’s socio-economic empowerment through entrepreneurship. With this emphasis on entrepreneurship for
women in Zimbabwe, this study sets out to explore whether entrepreneurship is
promoting women’s socio-economic sector in the country, focusing primarily on
urban Bulawayo.
This
chapter thus introduces the study on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship as a
women’s socio-economic empowerment strategy in Bulawayo. It is
composed of the background to the study, the statement of the problem,
objectives of the study, research questions, conceptual and theoretical
framework, significance of the study, delimitations and limitations of the
study and the structure of the dissertation.
1.1 Background to the study
European
nations have demonstrated that empowerment of female business people has largely profited their economies as far as
employment creation, income generation and general socio-economic development
is concerned. According to the Centre for Women’s Business Research (2012) in
America, women owned firms have an economic impact of $3 trillion that translates
into the creation and maintenance of 23 million jobs, that is, 16% of all U.S.
jobs. These jobs not only sustain the individual worker, but contribute to the
economic security of families, the economic vitality of whole communities and
the nation. According to Meng Xiaos (2011) the then Vice-President of All
China’s Women Federation. In 2011 China had over 29 million female entrepreneurs,
about 25% of the national total, among whom 41% were self-employed and private
business owners. According to Kumo (2009), Africa is the second biggest continent
in the world. However, it has a global wealth (GDP) of less than 4%, whereas
its share in worldwide population is nearly 16%. As a Third World continent,
Africa is largely characterized by very high rates of poverty, and stagnant
economies and employment creation. According to ILO (2010), youth unemployment
is a general phenomenon in the sub -Saharan countries. ILO (2010) further points out that 60% of the
unemployed in the Sub-Saharan region are youths. It is important to note that
these unemployed youths amongst them women venture into either legal or illegal
income generating activities in order to sustain their livelihoods. Under
colonial administration, African women were primarily perceived as responsible
for the depravity of African society (Schmidt, 1991). Thus colonialism, Christianity
and capitalism together with traditional patriarchal structures collaborated to
control the behaviour of women and the authorities used them as a general
strategy to maintain control over indigenous African people, especially women.
(Van Hook, 1994). Thus up to date, the space for female entrepreneurs remained
constrained. Especially due to the merging of colonial and traditional African
patriarchies, entrepreneurship was generally not encouraged for women.
In
1980, women accounted for more than 52% of the total population of Zimbabwe (CSO,
2009). The economy was vibrant owing to the role of its previous or colonial administrators.
However, the economy of the country took a downturn after the implementation of
the Economic Structural Adjustment
Programme (ESAP) in the 1990s, which gave birth to the ideology of corporate
downsizing that severely cast a shadow
over the once prevailing pathway to success, and established the general
perception that well-paying jobs were limited and difficult to acquire. ESAP
policies included de-regularization of labour markets and opening up of
national markets to international competition, leading to stiff competition
between locally manufactured goods and the cheap imports. This resulted in the
manufacturing sector losing the markets for their goods and undertaking massive
retrenchments to cut down on the labour expenses. However, in the year 2000, the
implementation of the Fast Track Land Reform attracted economic sanctions which
closed trade routes especially with western countries. This greatly contributed
to the rise of entrepreneurship as a strategy to substitute imports and thereby
promote livelihoods among the urban unemployed populations. Both educated and uneducated women in the
country faced a worsened situation of unemployment which spurred them to turn to
entrepreneurship as a source of finance.
The government of Zimbabwe noticed
the importance of the small businesses sector as evidenced by the formation of
the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in 2002 and the
introduction of the Small
Enterprises Development Corporation (SEDCO) in later years to support upcoming entrepreneurs. SEDCO is a leading finance institution for
the promotion and development of small and medium enterprises in the country. Its
main role in indigenisation and economic empowerment has been to provide entrepreneurial
finance, training and infrastructure. In February 2014 the Corporation’s name
changed from Small Enterprises Development Corporation (SEDCO) to Small Medium
Enterprises Development Corporation (SMDECO).The government of
Zimbabwe also formed the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community
Development (MoWAGCD) which plays a major role in empowering the Zimbabwean female
entrepreneur. However, female business visionaries in Zimbabwe and around the
globe keep on facing obstacles in their operations, requiring governments to
configure suitable measures to even the playing field for women
entrepreneurs in juxtaposition to their male counterpart.
No comments:
Post a Comment