– Dr. Pallavi Rao Chaturvedi, Executive Vice President of AISECT Group, Founder of ‘Get Set Parent with Pallavi’ and Vice President of the Early Childhood Association and a product designer of learning aids for young children

Michelle Obama rightly said, “There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.” This line indeed does justice to the quintessential role of women in its actual spirit.

As women become successful professionals or entrepreneurs, they align their motherhood duties with professionalism, in order to play her role of a doting, but sometimes strict, child caring parent. The intrinsic care-giving nature of a woman makes her naturally extra responsible for raising her children to become successful and happy individuals. Women have proved to excel in various sectors across the industry. Their nurturing persona is one of the prime reasons why women bring their unique skill sets and expertise to lead the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) business, such as speech therapy, nutrition, child counselling, linguistics and much more.

Necessary skill sets have enabled women to re-evaluate the opportunities and tools that are simply available in counselling, e-commerce, therapy, teaching and so on, to carve a potential niche for themselves. There are several areas of early education where we find women leading today, such as development of toys and learning aids for children, establishing pre-schools, NGOs, parenting apps, Edtech and so on. As the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also focuses on early childcare learning, it provides women entrepreneurs an advanced opportunity to gain a progressive perspective with an integrated approach towards education.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in the advancement and use of technology which has also helped parents embrace and balance their role as an educator. Owing to the growth of social media, there are several women out there who have taken to blogging their motherhood journey which has gained a lot of traction from like-minded audiences. As women are the perfect personification of strength and multitasking, they have taken a step forward in the early childcare learning arena, to build the foundation of successful future learners of our country. Moreover, the influence of women entrepreneurs in early childcare learning can make an immense social impact which will lead to the raising of healthy and smart children.

It has also been witnessed that, most people from small towns or cities mainly approve of branded pre-school education owing to their superior quality and standards, with regards to the organized curriculum and latest updates. Due to the lack of good training and communication skills among the teachers in small towns and cities, the leaning towards branded preschools has increased. The launch of the franchise model of preschools, has given an opportunity to women from all walks of life, to be the flag bearers in this field. Furthermore, such pioneering in the field early childcare learning is no more limited to the metropolitan areas; several Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are also seeing the rise of women entrepreneurs in the early learning sector.

We women have always been the backbone of our families, handling manifold duties and shuffling domestic life parallelly with our careers. The role of motherhood aids women in advancing their skills pertinent for businesses, therefore moulding their way into entrepreneurship. For the Indian economy’s growth trajectory, just like men, women entrepreneurs have an equally significant role to play.  According to the statistics run by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) in 2016, nearly 126 million women started running their own businesses and 98 million have been operating established businesses. In the present-day India, educated women are constantly learning and polishing their skill sets further, to add to their productivity and self-sufficiency by being able to earn their own living. The evolution of education and growing family support have further aided the women of our country to break free from the stereotypical barriers of the traditional Indian domestic households. It is said that ‘a child’s first teacher is its mother’, which in itself reiterates the success of women in the field of early childcare learning in India.