From Financial Access to Financial Management: A Bibliometric Analysis of Rural Women’s Entrepreneurship Research

Abstract

Rural women entrepreneurship plays a very important role in fostering inclusive economic growth, reducing poverty, and empowering gender, yet access to finance and effective financial management remain persistent challenges. Despite a growing body of literature on rural women entrepreneurship and financing, existing research is shattered across themes, methodologies and region, limiting a comprehensive understanding of the field. To address this gap, this  study employs a bibliometric review to map the intellectual structure, research trends, and emerging themes in rural women entrepreneurship and rural financing research. Using data mined from the Scopus database, Bibliometric techniques, including citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, country-level analysis, and keyword co-occurrence analysis, were conducted using VOSviewer. The findings reveal a growing scholarly interest in the field, with India emerging as the most productive country, while the United States and China demonstrate higher citation impact and stronger international collaboration networks. Keyword clustering identifies dominant research themes related to financial literacy, financial behaviour, sustainability, rural household finance, and behavioural finance. However, the analysis highlights limited collaboration among authors and a significant lack of empirical studies focusing on practical financial management aspects such as bookkeeping, working capital management, debt handling, and revenue planning. The study concludes that future research should adopt more collaborative, region-specific, and practice-oriented approaches to bridge the gap between financial awareness and effective financial management, thereby strengthening the sustainability of rural women entrepreneurship.