Gender and Credit Access for Indigenous Rural Self-Employed Businesses: A Case Study in Vietnam and Thailand

Indigenous entrepreneurship offers pathways for improving the quality of life while preserving traditional cultures. This study investigates gender-based discrimination in financial access for rural household entrepreneurs in Vietnam and Thailand. Quantitative techniques like statistical tests, instrumental variables, and Heckman selection models are applied rigorously to analyse a large panel dataset. Surprisingly, the results do not find clear evidence of discrimination against women in loan approval, interest rates, maturity, or collateral. However, female-owned enterprises exhibit slightly higher loan approval likelihoods than male-owned firms in Thailand. Thai women entrepreneurs leveraging political connections are more successful when applying for formal loans. The success of microfinance programs serving women and men entrepreneurs equally in both countries provides models for financial inclusion. Nonetheless, persistent colonial attitudes marginalizing indigenous women must still be dismantled through gender norm awareness initiatives. This study helps decolonize literature by examining indigenous entrepreneurship in Vietnam and Thailand through localized lenses.