Skilled Labor is a Return on Investment (Dignity) in business not a Cost - Rural Women Entrepreneurs

Skilled Labor is a Return on Investment (Dignity) in business not a Cost - Rural Women Entrepreneurs

A woman involved in an agricultural value chain in rural Maharashtra recently raised a question to Impactree in an FGD with rural producers. She asked why she is considered and labelled a “producer” and not an “entrepreneur” when she uses the surplus of agriculture (however small by business growth standards) to invest in multiple small enterprises, children’s education and other family needs, including using her time for care work, that should be considered investments for sustainability and holistic growth. Worth pondering?

Human labor, in conventional business, is counted as a variable cost to be adjusted (usually reduced) to accommodate the desired profit margins in an enterprise. Recently, this belief was overturned when they participated in Impactree’s entrepreneurship initiative, Netri, to provide us with the lens with which to view labor. Labor value for them has little to do with money or market. It is valued as Dignity—a social value and hence a Return not a Cost. Rural women in India have not internalized the concept of labor as cost notwithstanding innumerable business trainings they have been part of. Facilitators like us who have pursued traditional business principles and calculations with women have been stumped every time women have delicately omitted labor in calculations of enterprise profit and loss, despite enterprise-related training exercises that have placed labor on the side of cost.  

In 2022, Impactree.ai collaborated with Swayam Shikshan Prayog to initiate a programme in 3 districts of Maharashtra- Osmanabad, Solapur and Latur called Netri. The focus of the programme was to provide capacity building, financial access support and market linkages to support to women in the agricultural value chain undertaking business such as agriculture, allied enterprises such as dairy and multi-brand local retail stores. Netri in Sanskrit means Guide. At Impactree, the Netri vertical builds women entrepreneurs as leaders and guides who can be role models in their communities to scale enterprises and entrepreneurship.

The messages that came through from interactions with 54 rural women entrepreneurs trained in Netri in Maharashtra 7 months after inception of the program was that cultural embeddedness firmly undergirds business principles. Social capital and not just financial capital plays a big role in calculations of cost and benefit. The opportunity for enterprise skill and labor is a social value so is placed on the benefit side of the equation and remains there as skills are accumulated and more time is spent in business. The support provided by Netri was seen by these women as an opportunity to create multiple businesses and not necessarily only to increase revenue from a single business. Skilled labor expended by undertaking multiple businesses provides not just income but dignity many times over! Multiple businesses, in their dignity calculations, provide opportunities to test their skills in many sectors, use local resources in many different ways, and support their families (a paramount goal for them). Hedging financial risks by engaging in many income generating activities simultaneously is a default strategy for rural families anyway. But having their families believe in their abilities by demonstrating them across businesses, is a bigger confidence win for these women.

We know from studies that women in India withdraw from the labor force if their aspirational needs are not met (i.e. the jobs they get or wages offered are not commensurate with their education and skill levels) and/or their families are earning enough to cover for their basic needs. They may not even seek formal work in this case but create home-based work that provides them the space to nurture both businesses and family. Netri’s work validated this belief of rural women in Maharashtra. The understanding of cultural embeddedness of women’s perspectives and actions in enterprise that Netri demonstrated is the main reason that women of SSP were willing to participate in the program and also the reason that Impactree was able to customize the training and overdeliver (in terms of numbers of entrepreneurs engaged and impact on business expansion) in a short span of 7 months!

The cultural embeddedness understanding has implications for enterprise design as well.

Together, all these findings through the work in Netri inform the Data, Management and Analysis (DMA) design and tech platform that Impactree specializes in. The provide the culturally embedded contexts for measurement that can identify the Drivers, Influencers and Enablers for women’s entrepreneurship to flourish. In the case of Netri entrepreneurs the Driver was Dignity, Influencers were the Enterprise Trainers of Impactree who designed the training appropriately and Enablers were the Families of the entrepreneurs and the NGO, Swayam Shikshan Prayog.