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This paper aims to explore individuals’ economic empowerment and political empowerment association and the moderation role of entrepreneurship development programs on this relationship in the context of post-revolution Tunisia, which is a newer developing democracy.

The study uses a quantitative approach based on econometric modeling. A questionnaire was designed and administrated to a stratified random sample of 343 participants in the Entrepreneurship for the Participation and Inclusion of Vulnerable Youth in Tunisia program, funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund and implemented in rural northwestern Tunisia between 2017 and 2021. A coarsened exact matching method is also applied for robustness analysis.

The analysis shows that when individuals have enhanced economic decision-making agency and are involved in economic networks, they are more likely to demonstrate higher political empowerment. It also shows that expanding rural individuals’ economic opportunities by providing entrepreneurial resources, such as entrepreneurial training and microcredit, strengthens individuals’ economic empowerment and political empowerment association.

The study provides practical implications for policymakers in newer developing democracies. Citizens’ political empowerment and inclusion in rural areas could be promoted by developing entrepreneurship development programs, which could help reinforce the citizens-state relationship and establish more stable social contracts. The research also provides practical implications for the international development community, donor agencies and program designers through duplicating similar programs in other countries with weak central government structures (i.e. post-conflict environments, post-revolution).

The research attempts to contribute to the ongoing debates linking entrepreneurship, economic empowerment and political/citizen empowerment. It focuses on a Middle East and North Africa country, Tunisia, characterized by socioeconomic issues and low civic participation.

This paper aims to identify the dimensions of the political empowerment of Indian women and assess the factors responsible for the lacunas that hold women back in their potential.

The research was based on primary data collected through a personal interview method from a sample of 68 women managers working in five different sectors of the Indian economy, namely; IT, education, telecom, banking, and hospitality sector. Further, data on the five factors from a sample of 423 women employees from the above-mentioned sectors have been collected and analyzed using a multiple regression model with control variables (marital status and generation gap).

The major factors churned out that are needed for the political empowerment of women are namely, information or awareness, family support or family environment, legal environment, political environment, and personal ambitions or internal motivation.

The present study has presented new insight into the field of women and politics by providing a case study into the dimensions of political empowerment among Indian women. The pilot model developed in this study can be initiated and replicated across the land on being successful.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political effects of microcredit. The author provides the theoretical connections between microfinance and political empowerment and tests them in the context of Central Asia and the Caucasus, a region that is significantly lagging in political development and yet has a growing microfinance potential.

The author conducted a total of 100 in-depth interviews with microcredit clients in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in June 2010 and January 2011, respectively. The author chose my client samples randomly from two of the largest non-governmental microfinance institutions in these countries.

The findings of the survey reveal that microloans have only led to modest improvements in the socioeconomic status of the clients and had almost no effect on their political empowerment. Disaggregating the data further in terms of gender, type of loan and location of credit does not change the overall trends but reveals that to the extent that any political empowerment took place, group clients (mostly women) in urban settings were more aware and involved in political issues than individual clients in the villages.

Even with a carefully thought-out design, it is not clear how much the responses reflect the true and complicated impact of microfinance on the clients’ lives, a challenge that may be overcome in future research with focus group analysis or an ethnographic analysis of microcredit clients over a long period of time.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, these observations can help inform microfinance institutions, donor organizations and governments about the true potential of microfinance. A realization of the limits of this unique development tool may prove useful in reorienting the goals of foreign aid and designing a more effective approach to development.

Despite the extensive literature on the economic and social effects of microcredit, very little attention has been given to how economic empowerment generated by microcredit can translate into political empowerment at the individual level. This paper lays out the theoretical reasons for why such a relationship might exist and tests these hypotheses systematically in two countries, taking into account gender, type of loan instrument and location of the loan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment in Africa between the periods of 1975 and 2021.

This paper uses secondary data for 27 African countries obtained from the World Development Indicators, World Population Review and the Varieties of Democracy databases. Four dimensions of women empowerment, namely, economic, social, political and household, are considered while Islamic finance is proxied by a binary variable with 1 and 0 representing the presence and the absence of Islamic finance, respectively. The two-staged least square estimation technique is used to control for the problem of endogeneity.

This study revealed that Islamic finance positively affects women empowerment in Africa. Specifically, Islamic finance has positive and significant effects on women political empowerment, women economic empowerment and women social empowerment in Africa but nonsignificant effect on home empowerment. These effects are more pronounced in middle-income than in low-income countries and in countries with higher penetration rate of Islamic finance.

Policymakers should put in place the necessary mechanisms for the promotion of Islamic finance such as the enacting of laws that ensures the creation of full-fledged Islamic banks, encouraging research in Islamic finance and Islamic economics. These policies should equally be backed by the creation of some accompanying measures such as the abolition of social norms that limit women’s ability to take part in decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study involving an Africa continent-wide analysis of the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment.

The social inclusion of immigrants has been a central public policy issue in European countries, and entrepreneurship is often promoted as a form of integration. Female immigrants face double discrimination of gender and ethnicity while becoming entrepreneurs. The aim of the paper is to investigate the female empowerment in the host country as a predictor of immigrant women engagement in entrepreneurship.

Based on panel data for European Union countries for years 2006–2021, female immigrant entrepreneurship was modelled by the impact of variables showing the empowerment of women in host countries. Data availability was the determinant regarding the inclusion of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden were all in the research sample.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship is highly context-oriented and locale-specific (as in the physical setting for relationships among people), some universal patterns for a group of countries are found. A stronger political and managerial position of power for the women in host countries encourages female immigrant entrepreneurship, while the gender pay gap is statistically insignificant.

The originality of the paper is due to the multi-country level and female-focused research perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship. The study refers to the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, arguing that the empowerment of women in host countries affects female immigrant entrepreneurship at the macro-level.

This study investigates the effectiveness of microfinance-backed entrepreneurship as a mechanism for the holistic empowerment of women.

This study employs a mixed-method research-design consisting of quasi-experimental design (quantitative approach) involving women, both entrepreneurs (132) and non-entrepreneurs (238), as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews (qualitative approach).

Quantitative analysis revealed that female entrepreneurs are better off than female non-entrepreneurs in terms of economic, social, political and psychological indicators of empowerment. However, relatively lesser impact was found in terms of political, and to an even smaller extent, social empowerment of women. Analysis of in-depth interviews corroborated these findings confirming that entrepreneurship serves as an effective tool for the holistic empowerment of women. However, non-entrepreneurs also exhibit social empowerment.

Given the restricted geographical ambit of the study, prudence ought to be exercised in drawing inferences applied to alternate contexts. That the vast majority of questionnaire respondents are illiterate presented a notable impediment in the process of collection of accurate responses.

Microfinance intervention ought to be specifically directed to cultivating entrepreneurship among women; in particular, to achieve the full benefits of empowerment, women availing microfinance ought to exert full control over their own business ventures.

In analyzing holistic empowerment through microfinance supported businesses set up by women, the study adds to the existing literature on women entrepreneurship and empowerment.

This study aims to explore economic, social, psychological and political empowerment and dis-empowerment of women caused by microfiance interventions. Women tend to face the brunt of societal discrimination created by economic, social, psychological and political disempowerment. This led to the emergence of the microfinance model for the rural poor and specifically focused on women as an agency for social change.

This study is based on a systemic literature review to examine microfinance-led women empowerment to reduce the ambiguity in theoretical and empirical underpinning.

The study’s findings suggest that even though microfinance as a developmental model is not a runaway success, it did make some positive impact on the status of women.

This study shows that the microfinance program empowers women and reduces societal inequalities to some extent, but literature also suggests that microfinance as a model has failed to make the requisite socio-economic change, and in some cases, there is adverse impact.

This study aims to examine the political, economic, social and technological (PEST) factors of women empowerment in the context of rural development under the initiatives of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM).

The unit of analysis for this study is 459 samples. Non-probability sampling technique has been used for this study. Schedule/questionnaires have been circulated among the women in each block cluster. Frequencies have been used to represent the data against each statement. Non-parametric chi-square test has been used to examine the relationship between empowerment and political, economic, social, technological factors and interpersonal skills.

Statistical analysis shows that the Deendayal Antayodaya Yojana (DAY)-NRLM scheme has brought significant changes and development to women in political, social, economic and technological areas. It was observed that women are economically empowered and contribute to the economic upliftment of the family. Most of the respondents strongly felt that after being associated with DAY-NRLM, they were empowered to contribute efficiently to the social development process and activities.

The findings of this study highlight the impact of DAY-NRLM implementation at block levels of a district in India. Subsequent research may be carried to measure the effectiveness of the capacity-building program conducted under the banner of DAY-NRLM.

Women empowerment is not limited to awareness, whereas it needs a complete set of initiatives backed with support systems. Few critical interventions could be building strong networks, enhancing financial management, encouraging the spirit of entrepreneurship among self-help group workers, providing easy access to credit, mentoring, handholding, continuous monitoring and evaluation.

This study focuses on the impact of the DAY-NRLM scheme on women’s empowerment in the Morigaon district. The inferences from the study throw light on the empowerment of women vis-à-vis political, economic, social and technological factors.

This study is a primary study conducted in the Morigaon District of Assam. This is a new line of policy research that approaches the women empowerment with the PEST parameters.

This paper aims to explore the factors for self-help groups (SHGs) women empowerment in the state of Uttar Pradesh using the primary data.

The primary data have been collected by a household survey in the four districts of Uttar Pradesh. Factor analysis is used to estimate the odd of improving women empowerment after participating in SHG.

Factor analysis extracted four factors which were economic development, improvement in family matters, decision to use public amenities and political empowerment. Also, analysis of variance and t-test was used employing SPSS. The results, therefore, show that education has a significant impact on all the aspects of SHGs people.

The findings of the study can help policymakers to adopt appropriate policies that integrate empowerment in development projects with women.

The results of this research could encourage more women to participate in SHG activities and development projects.

This research provides the most updated data from a primary survey in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The purpose of this paper is to see whether the government subsidized microfinance program has been able to expand physical, economic, political and socio-cultural spaces across castes, creeds and religious beliefs.

The District of Murshidabad, West Bengal, India has been chosen as field of investigation. Initial survey was conducted in 2006. Same households were resurveyed in 2008. Therefore, the data are two period panel data. During survey a stratification was done according to socio-cultural status. To remove unobserved heterogenity, difference in difference method has been applied.

The program has been found to succeed in impacting upon physical, economic and political components of empowerment, but has failed to expand socio-cultural spaces of four socio-religious communities (SRCs) namely, upper castes, other backward castes, schedule castes (SCs) and Muslims (Ms). This study also examines the impact of the program on different measures of empowerment across SRCs, and shows that program participation has significant impact on the likelihood of empowerment for members of UC community.

Participation in SGSY program enable women to negotiate gender barriers, increase their control over their own lives, and improve their relative position in their households, though to some extent. But we do not mean to suggest that participation in SHGs is the only panacea to gender subordination. The authors acknowledge the need for consciousness raising, organizing and struggling for women’s right for women empowerment.

There is hardly any study measuring the empowerment potential of microfinance program across SRCs.