Women Entrepreneurship in India. A work-Life Balance Perspective

The purpose of this empirical study is to study women entrepreneurs’ psychological well being as supported by their family members in terms of support network so that effect of role overload and dependent care could be minimized. In any society, women receive relatively less support in order to fulfill their career aspirations. The study is using the scale developed by Mathew and Panchanatham (2011) to examine the factors of work life balance for women entrepreneurs in South India. These researchers have noted that role overload, dependent care, quality of health, problems in time management and lack of proper social support are the major factors influencing the WLB of women entrepreneurs in India. We observed the few limitations of the study carried out by Mathew and Panchanatham (2011) due to which we felt a strong need to conduct another study in this area. First, the study was limited to southern part of India, so we would like to validate it in northern India due to a significant difference in the culture of south and north India. Second, they explored factors of work life balance for women entrepreneurs while we are more interested in exploring the moderating impact of support network on the relationship of role overload and dependent care on quality of health and time management. Thus we are more interested in the causal relationship among the factors explored by Mathew and Panchanatham (2011) on a sample of women entrepreneurs in North India. Results showed the significant moderating impact of support network on the relationship between predictor and criterion variables on a sample of 130 women entrepreneurs in Delhi region. Implications are discussed for women in Indian society.