PurposeWomen empowerment becomes an important policy discussion in development economics and modernization theory. The empowerment of women can lead to an increase in the quality viz-a-viz the capacity of human resources accessible for economic development. The purpose of this study is to evidence the impact of social and economic dimensions on women empowerment through financial inclusion in rural India.Design/methodology/approachTo reveal the research objective, the study has utilized a primary survey of women respondents from the Gujarat state of India by a simple random sampling method and applied a logistic regression approach to identify the relationship between the need of a bank account (determinant of financial inclusion) as a dependent variable and social and economic dimensions of women empowerment such as earning status, participation in financial decision-making, recipient of social welfare schemes and perception towards the safety of saving as independent variables.FindingsThe results of this study show that earning status, participation in financial decision-making at household level and recipient of social welfare schemes by women have a significant impact on women empowerment through financial inclusion; however, safety of their savings is observed as an insignificant variable, yet the odd value is very high (2.437) in the present study.Originality/valueThe present study is the first of its kind to examine the social and economic status of women and its impact on their requirement of a formal bank account for the overall empowerment of women in rural India.

PurposeThe importance of gender in inclusive economic growth has been a growing area of research. Finance is seen as an efficacious instrument for social inclusion, and sustainable women empowerment (SWE). The lack of credit access often constrains women to scale up. The objective of this study is to examine the attributes influencing the decision of women to access the credit at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and the impact of this credit access on social, psychological and economic dimensions of SWE at the BoP in rural India.Design/methodology/approachThe threshold theory of decision-making in the form of logistic regression (LR) is applied here to analyze the influence of four determinants, namely individual household level (IHLA), social attributes (SA), economic attributes (EA) and ownership of documents (OD) on women’s credit access. Likewise, the same method is applied to study the relationship between credit access and three dimensions of SWE.FindingsThe results have revealed a statistically significant relationship between credit access and studied four attributes. Subsequently, a positive relationship has been observed between credit access and dimensions of SWE.Originality/valueThe present study broadly addresses the concern of accessing credit by women at BoP level, which helps the government and policymakers to promote enabling an environment for women entrepreneurship and comprehensive financial policies for the BoP.