Empowering Rural Women : Micro-Enterprise Through Achievement Motivation

In the past 60 years, there has been sufficient research on male, urban entrepreneurs, their "achievement-motivation", and their entrepreneurial success. However, no significant study of this kind has been undertaken for women entrepreneurs (whether urban or rural). This book intends to fill this lacuna through original research on poor, rural women micro-entrepreneurs, whose achievement-motivation has been rigorously measured. This pioneering study establishes a clear relationship between presence/absence of achievement-motivation and the success/failure of these women in sustaining their enterprises. The authors also describe in detail a replicable and scalable "cash-less" material loan model developed by the NGO Asian Centre for Organisation Research and Development (ACORD) for rural women micro-entrepreneurs, which can be used effectively to solve some of the problems related to rural backwardness.