Bridging female entrepreneurs using ICT

Among the barriers of many developing countries, one of the major problems is that a huge portion of women are still confined within the boundary of their home. A nation can in no way progress without the contribution of such a huge portion of population towards the economy. In spite of having potential, many women remain under-utilized just due to lack of necessary support, such as, capital, partners, workers, work-space and social security. In this age of technology numerous applications of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been introduced in homes and workplaces, changing the way we live, how we work, and what we are able to do. As a part of technology revolution ICT tools are becoming increasingly accessible to the rural underprivileged people. Technology is also essential for women's economic advancement and can help women in developing countries to increase their productivity, create new entrepreneurial ventures and access new income-generating pursuits. ICT is rapidly changing the global landscape and becoming a necessary tool for running a competitive business. The range of potential benefits ICTs offer is extensive; ensure better access to information crucial to business development, market and pricing information, production technologies, compliance, forecasts and training. ICT can also enable entrepreneurs to communicate better along the value chain as well as their administration more efficient. Since information and services increasingly becoming digital in both public and private sector, entrepreneurs without using technology have an obvious disadvantage.

Therefore a bridge between these two buzzwords `Entrepreneurship' and `Technology' can contribute to accelerate both the streams. Keeping pace with this motivation, we present the gender divide and ICT usage in entrepreneurship in context of Bangladesh and propose a study and platform which will help user to find complementary business partners, financers, information, services even in nearest locality. Though the problem is mainly explored focusing females in developing counties; gender based requirements of the environment, social context, customized design approaches, will be an interesting investigation. Study of this cross country topic can bridge the gender divide and its real-life implementation can surely contribute to raise the overall social and economic growth of any developing country.