Sustainable women empowerment at the bottom of the pyramid through credit access

Abstract

Purpose – The importance of gender in inclusive economic growth has been a growing area of research. Finance is seen as an efficacious instrument for social inclusion, and sustainable women empowerment (SWE). The lack of credit access often constrains women to scale up. The objective of this study is to examine the attributes influencing the decision of women to access the credit at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and the impact of this credit access on social, psychological and economic dimensions of SWE at the BoP in rural India. Design/methodology/approach – The threshold theory of decision-making in the form of logistic regression (LR) is applied here to analyze the influence of four determinants, namely individual household level (IHLA), social attributes (SA), economic attributes (EA) and ownership of documents (OD) on women’s credit access. Likewise, the same method is applied to study the relationship between credit access and three dimensions of SWE. Findings – The results have revealed a statistically significant relationship between credit access and studied four attributes. Subsequently, a positive relationship has been observed between credit access and dimensions of SWE. Originality/value – The present study broadly addresses the concern of accessing credit by women at BoP level, which helps the government and policymakers to promote enabling an environment for women entrepreneurship and comprehensive financial policies for the BoP.