Entrepreneurial activities and women empowerment in rural India between microfinance and social capital
Andriani, Luca and Lal, S. and Kalam, Asif (2022) Entrepreneurial activities and women empowerment in rural India between microfinance and social capital. Strategic Change: Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance 31 (2), pp. 227-237. ISSN 1086-1718.
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Abstract
Human development cannot occur without women’s empowerment. Particularly in marginalised contexts lacking equal treatment between women and men, women’s empowerment is conditioned upon their control on financial resources and on activities outside their households’ tasks such as entrepreneurial activities. Such contexts have been experiencing the escalation of microfinance schemes of which women have been the main target group. While scholars generally agree on the opportunities that microcredit represents for microentrepreneurial activities, its effective impact on women entrepreneurship and, hence, their empowerment show contrasting results. We aim to contribute to this debate by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews to female members of the group lending model of microfinance institute in the western rural area of Uttar Pradesh, northern India. The thematic questions of the interviews address, particularly, the social resources (social capital) and economic conditions underpinning the process of empowerment among women’s members of peer-group lending schemes. We find that social capital plays a crucial role for a peer-group lending to be successful both in terms of access to financial resources and loan’s repayment. However, we detect the presence of empowerment only where the outcome of this social capital resources is used by a woman to pursue her own entrepreneurial activities and self-determined goals. Our findings contribute to the social capital literature as well as on the current debate regarding the revision of the goals of microcredit schemes for minority groups in entrepreneurship.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at the link above. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2021 07:47 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Mar 2024 01:10 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/47075 |
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