Digital leadership: A missing catalyst for female entrepreneurship
Although female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh are using technology in producing, taking orders, and delivering products and services, most of them are heavily dependent on their support staff, which often leads to poor decision-making
Bangladesh is a country full of potential - that is acknowledged by everyone, everywhere. The advancement of women-owned businesses has been contributing to Bangladesh's astonishing economic growth, creating employment and productivity.
Despite plenty of challenges such as patriarchal culture, lack of family support, insufficient financial support from the government and banks, natural calamities, poor security, and so on, women-owned and led businesses have achieved excellent growth in recent years using business-supportive technologies.
However, the growth could have been accelerated more if they were competent at using technologies. Women are always criticised due to their negligence in adopting and using technology around the world. This phenomenon is also visible in Bangladesh, where many females lack knowledge and skills in existing technologies and are unaware of emerging technologies (EmTech).
The pandemic-induced lockdowns and social distancing issues have shifted brick and mortar businesses to websites or social-media based businesses. Therefore, the usage of online secure payment portals, order systems, tracking systems, and inventory systems has increased dramatically.
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Through observation, it seems that female entrepreneurs in western countries adopt and use the available technologies effortlessly in operating their business activities. A similar trend is visible in other parts of the world, like Southeast Asia.
The GEM Women's Entrepreneurship Report 2020-21 (an analysis of women's entrepreneurship in 43 countries) demonstrated that "over 252 million women were starting new businesses." Almost all of them have taken advantage of technology and social media platforms.
Likewise, female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh are also using technology in producing, taking orders, and delivering products and services. However, most of them are heavily dependent on their support staff (technologists), who misguide them in many cases while operating technology-related business activities.
In many cases, this dependency leads to poor decision-making (especially in the case of information-driven decisions), causing a decline in reputation, customer base, and eventually, business profits.
Additionally, many female entrepreneurs do not know how to use computers or smartphones. Moreover, many Bangladeshi female entrepreneurs do have adequate knowledge and skills in using basic computer programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Photoshop, etc.
As a result, their businesses are deprived of the benefits of different applications and technologies that can save their time and allow them to concentrate on their families.
Furthermore, many female entrepreneurs do not have good knowledge of the basic techniques of using social media platforms, online portals, and basic website-related tasks. They lose their business pages, in particular, due to a lack of knowledge about the changed operating processes of social media, particularly Facebook, Instagram, and others, causing significant inconvenience and customer dissatisfaction.
Moreover, they are in the dark regarding the laws, rules, and regulations of online businesses that also create complexity to survive in competitive environments! In solving these challenges, female entrepreneurs should be leading and managing those technologies and processes rather than depending on technologists and other people.
Hence, they could be able to grasp their market share from the fastest growing E-commerce sector in Bangladesh that is predicted to reach a size of $3 billion (according to e-CAB) by 2023.
In the above circumstances, nurturing the digital leadership of female entrepreneurs can be a catalyst for their long-term business success in the dynamic, competitive, and ever-growing business environment of Bangladesh. The fact is that people from rural areas can nowadays order products and services even if they need to get anything from their nearby towns. This is trending now!
As a result, female entrepreneurs with better and clearer knowledge of digital platforms and technologies have a better chance of achieving business success. In supporting them, the government, NGOs, and universities could play a pioneering role in developing female entrepreneurs' digital knowledge, skills, and leadership.
The government should arrange free mass training programs for female entrepreneurs, focusing on technological skills that are related to managing online and offline businesses. This would be a fundamental investment to make competent female entrepreneurs who will lead their businesses and will definitely generate huge returns!
Both public and private universities should have mandatory basic information and communication technology (ICT) courses where learners will be taught how to operate online portals, online order and payment systems, social media platforms, and so on.
It is also required because there are many graduates who do not even have knowledge of how to write and send an email. In this regard, female graduates are more vulnerable than their male counterparts when adopting technologies.
Therefore, these initiatives by universities can bring a significant improvement in developing the online-based entrepreneurial mindsets of female graduates and could facilitate their development of digital leadership skills.
Furthermore, non-government organisations (NGOs) should provide regular free training on websites, social media platforms, and online security issues for their female clients who will be able to utilise technologies for their business activities. As a result, the missing catalyst, the digital leadership of female entrepreneurs, can be developed to lead their business domains.
Md Asadul Islam, PhD is an Assistant Professor at Brac Business School. Email: [email protected].
Mohammad Enamul Hoque, DBA is an Assistant Professor at Brac Business School. Email: [email protected].
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.
