Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the entrepreneurship education and training needs of women entrepreneurs operating in agritourism sector of the Indian economy.

Paper long abstract:

During the last decades agritourism has expanded tremendously worldwide and a complex set of personal and economic goals resulted in the creation and maintenance of agritourism. Literature suggests (Lane and Kastenholz, 2015; Hyungsuk, 2012; Thomas et al., 2011; Carpio et al., 2008) that challenging conditions in the current agricultural context have encouraged farmers worldwide to develop agritourism. Agricultural sector in the developing economies is very male dominated, however, the contribution of invisible hands (women) cannot be denied (Sandhu, 2012). Women's contribution in the agricultural sector and access to entrepreneurial finance in the developing economies, which have nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem is an under researched area (Sandhu et al., 2017). This paper analyses the prospects of agritourism in Indian Punjab and significance of right EET for women entrepreneurs to make it a success. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through a survey of in-depth face to face interviews based on a semi-structured questionnaire undertaken with 50 registered farmers (Punjab Heritage Tourism Promotion Board) and 100 unregistered male and female farmers selected from different districts of Indian Punjab. The results suggest that there is significant scope to apply the concept of agritourism in the agrarian economy of the Indian Punjab. However, emerging research results suggest that male farmers are reluctant to involve females in business, mostly due to the potential involvement of outsiders. Lack of sufficient finance and the unavailability of specific, contextual EET, have emerged as the most significant challenges and barrier to success for both female and male entrepreneurs in the sample.

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