How does poverty affect female entrepreneurs in India?

A new study done on women in South India tends to explain the relationship between poverty and female entrepreneurial activity along with throwing light on the way in which two kinds of constrained consumption spur.

Authors Srinivas Venugopal , Madhubalan Viswanathan and Kiju Jung said that there is a complex interplay when it comes to what they define as chronic constrained consumption and periodic constrained consumption.

They added that an increase in chronic constraints can lead poor people to start small businesses, but if periodic constraints are numerous, the burden and stress that they place on the poor are so great that entrepreneurial activity is essentially stymied.

The authors base their findings on a study of over 150 poor women who live in an urban community in southern India.

Researchers said that there is a psychology of poverty that is important for them to understand and it is crucial to know the triggers, enablers, and suppressors of entrepreneurship in subsistence.

They added that scholars must be sensitive to the motivations and social structures that emerge within contexts of poverty rather than imposing pre-existing theories evolved in affluent contexts of the West.

The study is published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.