Women entrepreneurship in Coastal Kerala: role of self help groups in developing a sustainable community

The study was intended to examine the role of SHGs in promoting sustainable entrepreneurial competencies among members and to check whether the entrepreneurial competencies among women micro entrepreneurs can be discriminated based on their membership status in SHGs. The study investigated the opinion of SHG members and non-members in order to understand the cognitive part of entrepreneurial competencies among women micro entrepreneurs in coastal Kerala. The field data collected were supplemented with focus group interactions. Discriminant Analysis was performed to identify whether the status of membership in SHGs is a good predictor of their entrepreneurial competency. The results reveal that the prediction model is statistically significant, and that the status of membership in SHGs is capable of predicting the outcome variable.