Search results

Direct selling was founded on the philosophy of coaching people on how to successfully build a business from the ground up, and women comprise a large percentage of these direct selling entrepreneurs. In this chapter, we highlight the empowering benefits of direct selling. First, we focus on women micro-entrepreneurs who want to build their own small businesses, but on a limited scale while maintaining flexible schedules and work-life satisfaction. These women can benefit from the direct selling opportunity in terms of capitalization, formal structures, mentoring, income, self-efficacy, social capital, and life skills. Second, we profile women entrepreneurs who are building their own product organizations and have chosen direct selling as a go-to-market strategy for access to consumers. Three consistent attributes observed across these women are authenticity, affective commitment, and passion.

Chama microfinance models continue to be a safety net for many rural women in Kenya; however, their financial literacy remains largely unexplored. This study sought to explore the financial literacy of women entrepreneurs who are also members of Chama groups in rural Western Kenya, examine the specific indigenous practices and values that educators could draw upon to support and enhance the teaching of financial literacy to women, and also highlight the potential outcome of integrating indigenous knowledge and pedagogies to financial literacy. The study adopted critical participatory action research and African womanism methodology to centre learning on the experiences of rural Chama women. Based on in-depth interviews of six women in Western Kenya, the study found that the women's financial literacy can be explained and demonstrated through their relationships, connections and identity. On specific indigenous practices and methods the study found community engagement, centred learning and discovery learning, as relevant ways of engaging with the women. Integrating values, practices, and methods to inquire about the financial literacy from the Chama women's perspective cultivated an environment that encouraged mutual respect, sharing, participation and learning. Within the context of the findings, the study suggests that it is best to understand the women's financial literacy from their perspective. This study also contributes to knowledge on critical participatory action research and financial literacy from an Africana womanist perspective.

This review shows the systematic and bibliometric review of 361 papers on the impact of corporate social responsibility on firm performance from 2013 to 2023. The aim of this review is to research the development trends of women’s financial inclusion and women’s financial literacy during this period. The outcomes show that the issue of women’s financial literacy and women’s financial inclusion is particularly highlighted by scholars since 2019, especially for 2021 and 2022. This review focusses on two aspects of analysis: publish performance and content. In terms of published performance analysis, the publication information of papers is analysed to understand the publication trends and author’s research trends in this decade, and bibliometric maps are generated using VOS-viewer software. The bibliometric map shows that India and the USA are in the middle of the map which shows that the authors from these two nations have strong correlations with other authors. For the content analysis, we used VOS-viewer software to analyse the content of the title and abstract, the outcomes reveal three main streams about financial literacy and financial inclusion for women, especially in rural regions in developing economics and the suggestions for policymakers and government. This review attempts to cover the systematic and bibliometric analysis by presenting findings through analysis of selected papers, which highlights some possible gaps and opportunities in the literature along with a scope of directions for future research.

Among the various global options for self-employment, venturing into the micro-enterprise sector has been recognized as an important way for employment generation and poverty alleviation in many developing/emerging economies. In this context, women-owned businesses at the grassroots play a vital role in developing countries like India far beyond contributing to job creation and economic growth. The informal sector is a sizeable and expanding feature of the contemporary global economy.

However, the informal economy operates at the cusp of the institutional framework, which makes them susceptible to many risks like lack of formal financing options, legal aid or increasing margin through access to formal markets. Non-Profit Development Agencies (NPDAs) have emerged as a viable and essential middle ground support in promoting women entrepreneurship in their capacity to contribute beyond governmental institutions.

The study adopted an inductive qualitative option through a case study design to explore the approaches adopted by NPDAs in promoting micro-entrepreneurship among women at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in the urban informal sector in India. The findings suggest that the NPDAs created an impact through the services, which translated into monetary earnings for the entrepreneurs. They could make financial contributions to their families, which boosted their self-confidence and overall personality. The findings also indicate positive changes like increased self-confidence, self-dependence, and inner strength as reported by the entrepreneurs.

South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world with women substantially less likely to be economically active than men. This chapter draws from the theory of planned behavior to examine the enablers and barriers to entrepreneurship in South Africa. Specifically, we examine how attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms in the South African collectivist culture, and behavioral controls of resources influence women’s intentions to start a business. Based on interviews with two successful women entrepreneurs in South Africa, we highlight the key role that government, self-efficacy, and technology-based platforms can have in establishing women’s entrepreneurial intentions.

This chapter considers the process of entrepreneurial activity to deploy financial technologies (fintech) through mandate-specific new companies in Latin America. We deal with important historical issues such as defining the term, establishing temporal and industrial activity boundaries, positioning this particular process within other organizational forms typical of the region, the role of women, and other relevant issues such as the modernization of retail payments and personal lending. A central question is whether fintech start-ups have had a “scissor” effect in the entrepreneurial process of Latin America: at the base of the pyramid (i.e., reducing frictions to support overall entrepreneurial activity, increasing financial inclusion, etc.) and near the top (by creating new business leaders). As a result, this chapter provides an initial assessment of gender disparities and barriers enabling women entrepreneurs in the fintech ecosystem.

This chapter examines experts’ perceptions of the conditions of their entrepreneurial ecosystems to analyse women’s disadvantages, identify which conditions can improve in comparison to men in Latin America, and if the level of development of their country affects the support women entrepreneurs have. The study is based on regional data collected in Chile and Mexico with one of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys between 2015 and 2018. With a total sample of N = 2,230 male and female experts, the author uses principal component analysis and non-parametric statistics to compare means between genders and also women in different countries. First, male and female experts’ perceptions are compared at the macrolevel and then total women as a subsample are compared between the women experts’ perceptions by country at the mesolevel. At the macrolevel, the results show a clear perceived disadvantage for women entrepreneurs in all conditions except internal market dynamics. At the mesolevel, the findings show that support for women entrepreneurs is better in most conditions for Mexico, which is a less developed country, in comparison to Chile for this case. This chapter goes from studying the general to the particular issues causing gender gaps in entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing Latin American countries. The dataset used represents the biggest data-gathering project in the field of entrepreneurship for the region.