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

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-02-2022-0028
• Published date: 08 September 2022
• Date: 08 September 2022
• Pages: 157-171
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Mukesh Pal,Hemant Gupta

Sustainable women empowerment

at the bottom of the pyramid

through credit access

Mukesh Pal

Faculty of Management Studies, Indukaka Ipcowala Institute of Management,

Anand, India, and

Hemant Gupta

Alliance School of Business, Alliance University, Bangalore, India

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.

Keywords Access to credit, Bottom of the pyramid, Financial inclusion, Gender, Logistic regression,

Sustainability, Women empowerment

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

For inclusive and sustainable socioeconomic growth and to achieve the sustainable

development goals (SDGs), the achievement of fifth goal of SDG which is gender equality and

women empowerment (WE) become an important aspect. The word “Empowerment”means

to provide a woman a sense of control over her own life whereby she must have a choice to

make a decision and act autonomously while the gender gap emphasizes the discrimination

between men and women in several aspects such as employment, legal rights, education,

income, economic opportunities, political participation, etc (Damaske, 2020;Kochhar et al.,

2015;Maroto et al., 2019). Gender equality does not mean treating females equally to males

but it focuses on providing equal opportunities to access the resources and equal

participation in productive and reproductive life (Ghosh and Vinod, 2017).

The first goal of SDGs –the eradication of poverty –could be explained in economic terms

as upliftment of people living at the bottom of the human pyramid (BoP). The concept of the

Sustainable

women

empowerment

157

The authors acknowledge the due support rendered by women respondents for the present study. The

authors also acknowledge panchayats of the surveyed villages for the continuous support during the

survey.

Conflict of interest: There is no conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 2 February 2022

Revised 20 June 2022

Accepted 10 August 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 1, 2023

pp. 157-171

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-02-2022-0028