Role of Women Entrepreneurs in Healthcare & Wellness Industry

By: Dietitian Garima Goyal

Garima is a qualified nutritionist and is always very aesthetic about health issues who want to change people’s perspectives towards disease.

Wellness is defined as advertently an astute process of becoming aware of and choosing a pathway towards a healthy and fulfilling life. It's much more than being free from illness diseases, i.e. it is a dynamic process which subsets change and growth. “... and hence to quote in a general sort of a way it is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Wellness is not just a single entity but a composition of seven different dimensions including: Career, Emotional, Environmental, Spiritual, Social, Physical, and Intellectual.

1. Certain areas of healthcare e.g. women and child health care system require not only a female perspective and forwardness but also a more channelled strategy to get a positive outcome. This is seen perhaps in terms of most of OBGY healthcare professionals, to be women whether it be a physician, a surgeon, a nursing staff or even pre and post natal care worker. The simple reason is that the trust and the understanding of system of wellness is more better in a female than the other subsequent gender. In simple terms female wellness and healthcare personnel has a better grip of the conditions than the male.
    
2. Consider the fact that most of the nursing staff all over globe are female, most OBGY are female, most of the paediatricians are female, most of the diet care and consults are women. Is it a coincidence? No, they have excelled and dominated these areas and the intensity and intricate web like technicality of the whole system is better and will be always better understood by the mind of a female and will always require their ways of understanding.
   
   "All the women have the vision of the potential upside along with a potential downside - they have the eager for trying to mitigate the risk"
    
3. A not so out of context hypothesis is considering the automated voice systems and Artificial intelligences’ voices in various aspects of tech like Siri Alexa Cortana etc. the voice over is female because they are inherently trustworthy and mind soothing and acceptance of brain is easier. Even in GPS techs the voice command has been that of female. Have you stopped to consider that? Imagine it to be a male. Yes. Talking to male version of Siri will feel like arguing or just plain dumb...? This proves that women have an inherent quality to being trustworthy. The reason is that the simplicity in a complex matter can only be found by an apt mind-set of a woman.
    
4. Women now are more prominently focused on the living healthy themselves, hence the transition of seeing wellness as merely a lifestyle but rather is a business opportunity makes more sense there is a large network of all the people who are involved in the wellness and health industry, who have the capital desires for the growth of their platforms and also to motivate and inspire others towards a positive change.
    
5. Access to the following: seed, venture and private equity capital- this is often given by the big firms that are governed by the men- certainly this could be quite challenging for some of the healthcare enterprises, mainly due to the lack of gaining understanding of the concepts and the even the potential. They might not be having a vision for the value of investing, or even the growth potential, behind some of the promising sectors like nursing, yoga and fitness, not to mention whose consumers are predominantly women.
    
6. You have to have a blind optimism as an Entrepreneur. All the women have the vision of the potential upside along with a potential downside - they have the eager for trying to mitigate the risk. It is quite true that the women tend to see the risks differently than their counterparts (males) and are less subjected to look for outside financing. The women entrepreneurs who are a part of the wellness and healthcare system are not much excited or interested in the bank statements (earnings), rather they are much more devoted for the creating an impact of their business decisions on all the aspects of their lives. According to a report, it is seen and well know fact that women have to struggle more than their male counterparts to access bank loans and are much more likely to bootstrap or even self-fund businesses and ventures that could bring better services in the healthcare and wellness provisions. However, in the sight of viewing the risks much differently may lead to a whole different growth trajectory, women owned or governed businesses as well as enterprises continue to flourish- and we can see a growth in women starting up with new businesses in a rapid fashion and increasing numbers, particularly in the ever expanding healthcare or healthy living space. Women entrepreneurs and business owners can, and will, have great benefit from this growing interest in the health as they continue to innovate within the dynamic healthcare and wellness sector.

Final Word

In today’s world, women are rising in every different fields as compared to the past times. We can’t deny the fact that woman entrepreneurs are the cornerstone of the economic development of our nation. There is a definite need of the hour to have more and more women entrepreneurs for the acceleration of the economic status of our country’s health and wellness industry as we can witness that there are more women indulging into healthcare and wellness than men.