Indian transgender women creating social value through social entrepreneurship

This chapter highlights the need to go beyond the socially accepted binary sexes when considering female entrepreneurship. In culturally rich countries like India, the transgender community faces barriers which prevent them from breaking free from the socially assigned roles for men and women. Even though India has a long history with the transgender community, there are still reports of abuse. This chapter shares insights into two transgender women entrepreneurs in South India who create social value to help others who are discriminated against for their nonconforming gender and sexual identities. It examines the process by which they identified opportunities through witnessing and experiencing harassment and shows how this provided them with knowledge and access to stakeholders to create social value for others in the community. It shows how disclosing their gender identity gave them an opportunity to build resilience to create and share value with other members of the community.