Northern Sri Lanka went through three decades of civil war from 1983 to 2009. The civil war contributed to the massive destruction of the economy, and it is estimated that there were around 80,000 war widows in the Northern & Eastern Provinces that were severely war-affected, wherein the North was the most affected.
The increase in women-headed families contributed to the culture of women entrepreneurship in the North. Women who were either widowed or were wives of the missing persons had no option but to select self-employment as their only option to feed their families.
NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) and INGOs (international Non-Governmental Organisations) provided essential self-employment assistance, such as live stocks, home-based food processing equipment, and tailoring sewing machines, to support the economic empowerment of women-headed families. However, many women could not survive in livestock businesses, as livestock was subject to various diseases, and they were not familiar with handling them. This resulted in women entering the food-processing and tailoring industries.
The current consequence of ‘extreme market saturation’ is a result of choosing the known industries out of survival instinct. Women’s struggles continue to remain acute in the context. Despite being forced into self-employment, they have language problems and less entrepreneurial exposure.
Many women prefer these business ventures because they mainly rely on home-based businesses. The lack of daycare centres and less support the family members provide lead to further struggles. The point of no support and social criticisms remain a core challenge to proceed with marketing and to explore diverse opportunities, especially for those hailing from the rural context.
While these women entrepreneurs survive their businesses, many fall victim to exploitations from the buyer networks. Many survive through known networks with minimal exposure. This dependence on a few networks makes them victims to buyer exploitations such as ‘ghosting’ after making orders and ‘not paying’ on time. This vicious cycle puts women in a much more vulnerable state.
Moreover, women tend to be more affected by a lack of access to investment, as many banks require their husbands’ approval and written consent to provide business loans. Such practices that create ‘dependence on their spouses’ trigger disempowerment rather than empower women.
Similarly, factors such as market saturation also reduce their ability to set high-profit margins, as many food products, such as chilli powder, curry masala, nutritional flour, palmyra roots and flour, and dried food products, remain undifferentiated.
Additional difficulties occur through the hardships of finding new sustainable markets. Volatile price conditions of the raw materials also reduce their ability to earn sustainable profit margins. Due to these circumstances, many tend to earn little profit margins.
Many women entrepreneurs therefore report making diverse product portfolios in the same industry to ensure their economic survival. Product concentration or brand-building becomes extremely difficult, as they focus mainly on passing the ‘economic survival’.
Further challenges occur for women entrepreneurs in the form of ongoing battles with their family members to fight for their own rights. Many women from rural villages reveal how their families expect them to prove that they can be successful one day and that they need to travel to get the marketing done and to get the exposure they need for their businesses.
Married women from the rural context also express concerns about how their spouses and mothers-in-laws expect them to be just ‘housewives’. Women-headed families are different in that they realise the need for ‘economic independence’. In a counterintuitive way, women-headed families have better sociocultural empowerment that they earned through hardships in different stages of their lives.
Despite such an ocean of challenges, it is still optimistic to see women entrepreneurs thrive on a good note, especially in rural villages. For example, although many run businesses as solopreneurs, they form groups to handle bulk orders. Many women in Palmyra-based business processing tend to have formed informal groups to make it happen whenever they get seasonal orders.
Similarly, the fact of unavailability when it comes to proper daycare facilities also doesn’t discourage them from proceeding with their business ventures. Women form sisterhoods with their neighbour women and those who are into similar self-employment initiatives, so that they support each other. The same practice applies to travelling as well. Women from rural villages struggle to get permission from their families to travel. This remains a fact to date. However, women accompany their neighbours when travelling far, so there is a greater chance of getting permission from their families.
The last but not least point is the peer-to-peer motivation that women entrepreneurs provide to each other. Even though there is a deficit of motivational channels to motivate women to pursue economic prospects in the rural context, many admitted that the current women who have somehow succeeded in their entrepreneurial journeys become extreme points of motivation for others in their communities.
It is, hence, appropriate to say that women are thriving because it is even challenging to survive their entrepreneurial ventures in a context that is so rigid structurally and culturally. In fact, it is astonishing how women are thriving on their own without relying much on external support systems.
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