SOCIOECONOMIC STUDY ON ETHNIC WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHATTOGRAM HILL TRACTS

Abstract

Women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh has seen tremendous achievement in recent days in a male dominated developing country like Bangladesh. This has ensured not only economic but also social development in the country. Although women of indigenous group from the Chattogram Hill Tracts have far more social mobility than women in the plain districts, they haven’t still seen the light of entrepreneurial business in a profitable manner. This study aims to discuss about developing entrepreneurship among the tribal women and their marketing performance of the study area. For this descriptive-analytical study, data were collected from 120 ethnic women entrepreneurs of agricultural commodities (vegetable enterprise, fruit enterprise and others) using simple random sampling methods in the three study areas: Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban districts. Three local markets were further chosen randomly from each of the study areas. Data were collected using a valid and reliable questionnaire having four modules, consistent with the four objectives defined in the study: socio-demographic profile, entrepreneurial business performance, factors affecting the development process and constraints and opportunities of ethnic women entrepreneurs. The enterprises were categorized as three types (vegetable enterprise, fruit enterprise and other enterprise) for the feasibility of the study. The results showed that, above 90% ethnic women are engaged in sole proprietorship whereas, rest of 10% prefer to run their business in partnership or company. Several factors have a significant effect on their business performance (p=.001) which were categorized in four sectors: environmental, social, economic and marketing factors. The results also revealed that the ethnic women entrepreneurs have a very poor profit margin and marketing performance including the marketing efficiency of vegetable enterprise (0.41), fruit enterprise (0.28) and other enterprise (0.13). The findings also indicated some major constraints of ethnic women entrepreneurs and their effects in the forms of lack of capital, credit availability, training facilities, transportation problem etc. Considering the significant relationship among the factors and business performance of ethnic women entrepreneurs, some possible recommendations are also made in this thesis paper. The study can be a supportive study for both growers and entrepreneurs mostly of agricultural commodities. This research study will also play a major role in interlinking the ethnic women entrepreneurs with the market, thus explaining the value chain of profitability of ethnic women entrepreneurship development. This study can also be a supportive research for national policy as well as for further research.