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Inadequate finance is considered a major factor limiting the growth of small-scale women-owned farm enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women empowerment programs such as table banking (TB) and women enterprise fund were initiated in an attempt to curb the credit gap affecting women in agribusiness. This paper determines the factors influencing the extent of credit access among women farm-entrepreneurs who are either members or nonmembers of TB groups in Kenya.

The study was conducted in Kericho County using a sample of 384 respondents. Factor analysis was used to generate three indicators of entrepreneurial orientation which were included as explanatory variables in the regressions. Double hurdle econometric model was employed to analyze the factors influencing the decisions on credit uptake and amount of borrowed loan. Separate models were estimated for members and nonmembers of TB groups since they differed in volume and source of loan accessed.

Results reveal that age of the woman and innovativeness negatively influenced credit access, whereas education level, participation in off-farm activities, number of farm enterprises, perception on interest rate, extension contacts and financial knowledge positively influenced the decision to access credit. On the other hand, participation in off-farm activities, risk-taking behavior, total land size, extension access and financial knowledge were statistically significant with positive correlation on the amount of loan borrowed. Significant factors differ between members and nonmembers of TB groups implying divergence in underlying credit access challenges once one has joined such groups.

The study did not consider supply-side factors affecting the amount of loan accessed by women farm-entrepreneurs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the pioneer studies using the double hurdle model to analyze factors influencing the extent of credit access specifically among women farm-entrepreneurs and carrying out the analysis by membership in TB groups.

This paper aims to explore how gender is “done” on farms in Sweden in the context of increased tourism and hospitality activities. The authors seek to investigate how gender is done vis-à-vis women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship. They seek to answer the questions: What has motivated the farm women to become tourism entrepreneurs? How are the gendered divisions of labor changed through women starting businesses? How does the gendered associated symbolism, as well as the identities, change?

Research has indicated that introducing tourism entrepreneurship at farms may challenge established gender relations, as many of these entrepreneurs are women. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with 15 women farm tourism entrepreneurs in central Sweden.

The analysis suggests that the gendered divisions of labor are not changed through the interviewed women starting tourism businesses. The authors conclude that the women build their entrepreneurship and develop some of their products on an image of rural domesticity, including a representation of themselves as traditional farm women. At the same time they are changing how gender is done through identifying as entrepreneurs and changing the use of the farms.

The authors seek to fill the research gap concerning women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship and the potential associated gendered changes. Their theoretical contribution is applying the perspective of “doing gender” and entrepreneurship, for delineating potential changes in gendered relations.

Financial knowledge (FK) is considered one of the major factors influencing performance of farm enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of FK on performance of women farm enterprises. Performance is measured using levels of savings and enterprise margins.

The study uses primary data of 384 farmers from three sub-counties in Kericho County, Kenya. It employs a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to control for possible selection bias and to model the impact of FK on performance of women farm enterprises.

The analysis reveals that high FK has a significant positive impact on performance of women farm enterprises. Specifically, respondents with higher levels of FK were also associated with higher amounts of savings and enterprise margins.

Econometrically, robust strategies were employed using PSM to ensure minimal estimation bias. Although PSM captures selection bias due to observable characteristics, it fails to capture selection bias due to unobservable factors.

The paper contributes to the growing debate on the role played by FK on performance of small and micro enterprises. It provides insights on the state of FK among women farmers and identifies knowledge gaps and policy implications from a developing country perspective.

There is a recent growing interest to find a lasting intervention to rural poverty (RP) in developing countries based on farmer entrepreneurship and innovation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine the relation between entrepreneurship and RP alleviation in two resource-constrained provinces of China. This paper assesses the influence of three capabilities of farm entrepreneurs – educational, economic and socio-cultural – on farmer entrepreneurship growth and how these, in turn, impact alleviation of RP.

Household survey data comprising 363 respondents were taken from four deprived communities in two provinces of China. The paper employed structural equation modeling (SEM), using AMOS 21.0 alongside SPSS 20.0 to test the relations between the constructs.

The results show that a statistically significant and positive relation exists between entrepreneurship and RP alleviation in China. The findings of the study further reveal that qualitative growth of entrepreneurship has a stronger positive influence on RP alleviation than on quantitative growth, and socio-cultural capabilities of respondents significantly and positively affect entrepreneurial growth of farmers, rather than education and economic capabilities.

The use of data from four communities in two provinces tends to limit the ability to generalize the findings of the study. Furthermore, the survey did not collect information on non-farm entrepreneurs, making it impossible to compare the findings from farm entrepreneurs with non-farm entrepreneurs.

The findings have practical implications for policy makers in rural China toward addressing targeted RP. This paper, therefore, suggests that entrepreneurship should be pursued vigorously among farmers in rural areas of China to help solve poverty. The paper also presents a useful lesson for various stakeholders in poverty alleviation programs in other developing countries.

This paper contributes to the academic literature on the entrepreneurship–RP alleviation nexus by combining the theory of capability and SEM in the analysis of an emerging economy such as China.

Credit is essential in the farm business because it facilitates the adoption of productive technologies such as irrigation. However, access to credit remains a significant hurdle for sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghanaian farmers. Therefore, the authors assessed credit utilization and the intensity of borrowing by irrigated rice farmers in the Upper East region. In addition, how extension moderates the amount borrowed was analysed.

The multistage sampling approach was used in the study. The Tono and Vea irrigation schemes were purposively selected. Proportionally, 318 rice farmers were sampled from the Tono irrigation scheme and 159 from the Vea irrigation scheme. Cragg's double hurdle and moderation analysis were used.

It was uncovered that gender, age, years of farming, total farm size, rice farm size, contract farming and off-farm employment explain farmers' decision to borrow. On the other hand, the intensity of borrowing was influenced by gender, age, years of farming, rice farm size, contract farming and the number of extension contact. The moderation analysis revealed that extension contact improves the amount borrowed by farmers.

While there are irrigated rice farmers in other regions of Ghana, this study was limited to rice farmers under the Tono and Vea Irrigation schemes in the Upper East region.

This study investigated the moderating role of extension contact on amount borrowed in Ghana. This makes a modest addition to the limited literature on the moderating role of extension and credit access.

In 2003, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in southern India, Jayaram Jayalalithaa, gave a speech about the “silent revolution” of the empowerment of Indian women. But 15 years on, regrettably, the promises of that revolution do not seem to have been fulfilled. Thanks to the various programs set up to champion women’s empowerment (involving local NGOs, public programs, and international support), women are now more prominent in certain public spaces and are able to play a genuine advocacy role with regard to the public authorities. Girls education has also significantly improved. But it has not brought about improved employment opportunities. Women are in fact losing out on paid employment (as is the case in India as a whole). They are also heavily indebted (not only from microcredit, but also informal lending and lending from private financial companies). Their indebtedness is disproportionate to their income, and compared to men. Moreover, women almost exclusively put debt toward the social reproduction of families. Reduced opportunities for paid employment and massive debt have hit Dalit women particularly hard. The analyses of this chapter use data collected over more than a decade in a rural area of Tamil Nadu, drawing together ethnography and quantitative data, including panel data (2010–2016). They shed light on the complexity of social change, intertwining forms of domination (here, caste, and gender), and the ambiguous qualities of so-called empowerment programs, whose impacts have been various and unexpected.

This paper aims to explore the market creation practices of farm-based entrepreneurs in the local food sector. Alternative marketing channels for farm-based products increase, but it is not known how entrepreneurs work to position their products in the marketplace. By expanding on the research of farm-based entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial marketing (EM), this study explores the entrepreneurial practices that farm-based entrepreneurs use through the lens of the EM mix (EMM) and its constituent dimensions: person, purpose, practice and process.

The study uses a multiple case study design and follows a phenomenological approach in conducting in-depth retrospective interviews with 11 successful farm-based entrepreneurs in the local food sector in Norway.

The thematic analysis revealed four key EM practices of the study’s farm-based entrepreneurs: transferring the farm or transforming the farm as the primary purpose; legitimising a local brand through the uniqueness of person, purpose and place; using a personal networking approach in the market development process and flexible and controllable market expansion practices. These elements constitute the pillars of successful, creative and resource-efficient market development.

The study represents a pioneering attempt to explore and conceptualise EM within farm-based entrepreneurship. The findings ultimately give rise to a novel framework: the farm-based entrepreneur’s marketing mix (FEMM).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the presence of women among owner-stakeholders affects firms’ financial performance. Particularly, it extends the corporate governance literature by linking stakeholder theory and gender differences to explain why gender composition of ownership matters for firms’ performance. As the management of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) revolves around owner-managers and their individual characteristics that are likely to affect their achievements, the study further investigates the relationship between the gender composition of ownership and the firm survival.

Using survey data on SMEs for 2007 and 2010, this study uses a panel-level heteroskedasticity technique and a probit methodology to assess the effect women’s presence among owners may exert on SMEs performance and survival, respectively.

Results indicate that firms jointly owned by men and women appear to perform better than those owned by men although the presence of women among owners does not correlate with firm survival.

While the findings of this study shed some light on the performance impact of gender composition of firm ownership, reports based on the presence of women among owners may not present the full picture. Whether the ownership is shared equally between different genders might provide further insides on the magnitude and/or robustness of such effect. Moreover, a small sample period (T = 2) was used to analyse a single industrial sector (manufacturing), and even though the Hausman test confirmed the use of random-effects specification, caution should be taken when generalizing the findings to other cases.

The findings suggest that the leadership in mixed-gender context propels a perspective of women as a valuable resource within SMEs, but relying on it to sustain the survival would be unwise.

South Africa scores particularly high on positive actions towards women entrepreneurship, and this is compounded in the SMEs sector by managerial attitudes that could offer positive developments for women.

The positive and significant relationship between women’s presence among owners and SMEs financial performance in South Africa complements the almost exclusively reported negative impact of gender diversity on firm performance. Consequently, mixed-gender owners’ team can be used as a fulcrum to promote SMEs growth in South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss to what extent and why women's entrepreneurship contributes to rural economic viability and gender equality in an advanced welfare state.

The authors use detailed register data to explore men's and women's rural businesses in the most common industries for rural women entrepreneurs in the Swedish welfare state. Based on a literature review, the authors develop hypotheses and analyse how family, business and industry factors influence earnings.

Women's rural entrepreneurship is important for rural viability, as women's businesses provide a wide range of services necessary for life in rural areas. Although women's rural businesses are not significantly smaller than those of men, women's income is lower and more sensitive to business and industry variables. Marriage has positive effects for the earnings of men but negative effects for the earnings of women. The authors argue that the results are contingent on the gendering of entrepreneurship and industries, as well as on the local rural gender contracts. For these reasons, the importance of women entrepreneurs for rural viability is not reflected in their own incomes. Hence, women's rural entrepreneurship does not result in (economic) gender equality.

Entrepreneurship scholars rarely explore women's rural entrepreneurship, and particularly not in the Global North or Western welfare states. Therefore, this empirical study from Sweden provides novel information on how the gender order on the business, industry and family levels influences the income of men and women entrepreneurs differently.

Entrepreneurship in the rural hospitality and tourism sector (RHT) has received wide attention in the past decade. However, a systematic review on this topic is currently lacking. This study aims to track the progress of the RHT and entrepreneurship literature by examining the various thematic research areas, identifying the research gaps and forecasting avenues of future research on the topic.

This paper catalogs and synthesizes the body of literature from the year 2000–2020 using a systematic literature review methodology. After discussing a brief history of RHT and entrepreneurship, the current study presents a review of 101 research articles.

The review highlights that RHT and entrepreneurship have received relatively limited attention from entrepreneurship journals. The content analysis revealed different gaps and limitations in the understanding of entrepreneurship in RHT, including a predominance of qualitative studies with limited theoretically-grounded and generalizable empirical studies. Furthermore, a high concentration of studies is from European countries. Six main thematic research areas were identified, namely, barriers and enablers, the roles of an entrepreneur, women in RHT, influencers of firm performance, innovation and value creation and methodological commonalities. The review also advances an RHT entrepreneurship ecosystem framework to summarize the findings.

Six promising research avenues are outlined based on the six themes identified. The suggested research questions draw from allied literature on small and medium businesses, innovation, women entrepreneurship and institutions to encourage the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of ideas. The findings are summarized in a novel research framework.