Women’s entrepreneurship is considered as a valuable source for transforming local resources into value-based goods and services while also promoting creation of additional job opportunities for other women leading to social and financial empowerment. The growth of home-based women entrepreneurs is considered to be one of the significant forces behind the economic growth of both developed and developing countries. Home based women entrepreneurs are entering various business sectors, yet they encounter many challenges and roadblocks on the way to success. Access to capital for scaling their business, cultural norms, lack of social support, conflict between professional and personal life, poor financial planning, lack of business management skills, childcare responsibilities, lack of training on entrepreneurship, poor networking and lack of business credibility are few of the barriers faced by women home based entrepreneurs in growing and expanding their businesses.

In Pakistan, women account for almost half of the population but still the women participation rate in labour force is only 22.7% as compared to 82.6% for men. This gender gap in labour force participation is one of the highest in the world. Women’s participation in the formal sector is even lower, at only 8.6%, compared to 36.4% for men. Only 1% of women are entrepreneurs as compared to 21% of men entrepreneurs in the country. The Pakistani Government has taken steps to provide opportunities for promoting women entrepreneurship by providing technical trainings and mentorship particularly to women for starting a business. Various civil society organizations are also offering women sustainable microfinance services to improve financial skills, particularly for women to become active agents of social and economic change. However, still the number of women owned businesses are low as compared to men owned businesses.

The team at Cyntax Health Projects conducted research to assess opportunities and obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs running home-based business in Pakistan. The results of the current study revealed that most of the home-based women entrepreneurs were based in urban areas with majority of the women entrepreneurs being above age 40 years. The majority of the respondents were running clothing-related businesses from their homes. Most of them were operating on a small scale and had not yet registered their businesses in the country. The results of the study highlighted that most of the respondents especially from rural areas did not receive any family support to run their home-based businesses and their male counterparts did not cooperate with them to support their ventures. The majority of the respondents highlighted that they did not receive any social support and also suffered from harassment while operating their businesses. The results of the study showed that majority of the home-based women entrepreneurs faced difficulties in acquiring loans for setting and scaling up their businesses. Most of them did not know about credit facilities launched by financial institutions for women and did not have access to better infrastructural facilities for their businesses. The current study reported that women running home-based businesses faced psychological barriers in terms of their ability, had weak bargaining position, faced difficulty in

attracting customers, lacked good marketing skills while majority of them had to face unfavourable market behaviours. The present study revealed that majority of the respondents were of the view that regulations for registering businesses were strict and they had to give bribery. Most of them shared government did not support women businesses. Majority of the respondents were concerned regarding difficult registration procedures and perceived high cost related to registration fee and applicable payable taxes as a major barrier for women business.

Based on these challenges identified and to help home based women entrepreneurs build their skills and confidence, Fempower Mart has launched the concept of Create your Brand. Home based women entrepreneurs can register on our platform and showcase their products websites and social media handles. The women entrepreneurs registered will also be provided with opportunities for training on business registrations, product readiness, financial literacy, digital marketing and linked with further potential clients globally.