Conclusions
Social enterprises identify the problems existing in society that can be addressed with the creation of social and economic value. These organisations emerge as a response to government failure in supporting people from subsistence context who face social and economic challenges because of institutional voids. Social enterprises may make use of business models and marketing to help support members with their economic activities. However, the overall objective is creation of social value, which may be bigger than economic value and may be useful to members. In India, some social enterprises have been working with women to help them with their market transactions. A package of services and inputs are provided to the women members to ensure productivity enhancement and income increment as a result. These organisations make use of existing skill base of women, use technology to the extent needed, support members with loans and regular incomes, provide market access, give scope to take decisions and enable networking so that women take charge of their lives. For an intervention to leave a lasting impact, the intervening agency should try to understand the context in which oppressed communities live. Later the business should be conceptualised with end to end solutions, which are supported by significant organisations. The efforts should also be directed towards creating visibility for the artisans who remained invisible for ages. Most importantly, the mechanisms of the intervention should enable creation of a countervailing force that would help oppressed communities to exercise bargaining power with their oppressors. Also, the intervention should devise suitable roles for men involved as the gender relations need to be carefully crafted if women are to be empowered. Thus, it was found that skill enhancement, access to remunerative markets, steady income and continuous handholding would lead to confidence among women members of oppressed community, thereby creating in them the ability to choose. Most importantly, mechanisms must be established using which the women and men of the oppressed community should be able to “make choices” of their own without coercion. This paper highlighted beneficial effects of three social enterprises which were involved in empowering women through their interventions. It contributes to the literature of social enterprises by highlighting their role in women empowerment. It also discusses and analyses the work done by the three social enterprises using a conceptual framework developed in the paper. Further, it tries to narrow the gap existing between development practitioners and the theoreticians of social entrepreneurship in terms of approach to be used for creation of social value.
