Credit access and women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe’s informal sector
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Date
Authors
Mukarati, Julius
Mongale, Itumeleng P.
Makombe, Godswill
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Allied Academies
Abstract
Despite government’s huge investments in the informal sector activities, women are
constrained in the credit market mainly due to culture; norms and lack of collateral securities as
majority of women do not have control over productive capital. As a way of improving access to
credit by women, the Government recently launched a number of women empowerment policies
among them is the improved access to credit from financial institutions. Using individual firm
level data and a methodological approach consisting of endogenous switching regression
approach, this study intends to empirically investigate whether the improved credit access by
women is justified in Zimbabwe. An endogenous switching regression is appropriate to deal with
individual heterogeneity and examine whether access to credit is gender-based. The results
showed that there is no discrimination in the credit market as there is no significant difference in
access to credit between male and female entrepreneurs. However, there is a slight significant
improvement in firm performance due to access to credit. The study recommends that Microcredit be made more flexible and to incorporate special relief non-financial intermediations to
meet so as cater for the gender needs of household and community.
Description
Keywords
Credit access, Women entrepreneurship, Endogenous switching regression
Sustainable Development Goals
Citation
Mukarati, J., Mongale, I.P. & Makombe, G. 2020,'Credit access and women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe’s informal sector', Academy of Entrepreneurship, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 1-6.