Financial Inclusion as an Antecedent of Women’s Self-Employment Sustainability in Zimbabwe

This study looked at financial inclusion as a prior factor for women’s self-employment staying power in Zimbabwe. Even though women do play a huge part in self-employment and entrepreneurship, many women-led enterprises still bump into issues around business endurance, expansion, profitability, and overall resilience. Most earlier research has tended to emphasize access to money and business results, while paying not so much attention to how financial inclusion, meaning the availability, utilisation, and also the quality of financial services, affects whether women-owned firms can continue operating in Zimbabwe. So this study tried to sort of close that gap. In terms of the research direction, the study used a positivist research philosophy, followed a deductive research approach, and applied a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. The target group was self-employed women running both formal and informal enterprises across Zimbabwe. A sample of 384 respondents was chosen through stratified random sampling. For the data, structured questionnaires were used, alongside key informant interviews. The numbers were handled with descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis, aided by SPSS Version 27, while the qualitative responses were processed using thematic analysis. The results showed that financial services were generally accessible to women entrepreneurs, through banks, microfinance institutions, savings groups, and digital financial platforms. However, challenges such as collateral requirements, affordability constraints, and limited financial literacy continued to hinder effective access and utilisation. The study established that mobile money services, digital banking platforms, and savings products were the most often utilised financial services. Also, the quality of financial services, really mattered for business sustainability. When they ran the regression analysis, it showed that financial service availability, utilisation, and quality all had a positive and statistically significant effect on women’s self-employment sustainability. In fact, utilisation turned out to be the strongest predictor. So the study basically concluded that financial inclusion is a critical determinant of women’s self-employment sustainability in Zimbabwe. Sustainable business outcomes are more likely when financial services are available, frequently used, and able to respond to the needs of women entrepreneurs, sort of in a direct way. For recommendations, the study suggests creating gender-responsive financial products with flexible collateral requirements, pushing for enterprise formalisation, strengthening market access chances, and doing continuous monitoring of women-led enterprises. Finally, a financial inclusion framework was proposed too, aimed at boosting the sustainability of self-employed women’s businesses in Zimbabwe.