IN WHAT WAYS DO INTERSECTING SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS SHAPE REVENUE GROWTH AMONG RURAL WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN KZN, SOUTH AFRICA?

Abstract

Rural women entrepreneurs in South Africa face systematic, intersecting barriers to revenue growth rooted in gender, race, class, and geographic marginalisation. This study investigates how these socio-economic factors shape revenue growth performance among 273 rural women entrepreneurs in KwaZulu-Natal’s uMhlabuyalingana, Big5Hlabisa, and eJozini municipalities. Employing a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected through structured questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, chi-square tests, and structural equation modelling (SEM) with SPSS 29.0 and AMOS 26.0. Grounded in intersectionality theory and feminist political economy, the study tested six constraint dimensions: gendered poverty and class, spatial marginalisation and rurality, market access barriers, financial exclusion, institutional access barriers, and gendered income control. The SEM demonstrated excellent model fit and confirmed that all six dimensions significantly and negatively impact revenue growth performance. Findings reveal that rural women entrepreneurs do not underperform due to lack of capability, but because of deeply entrenched structural inequalities operating simultaneously. Single-issue interventions consistently fail because they do not address the interconnected nature of these constraints. The study advances quantitative intersectionality scholarship and provides evidence-based recommendations for comprehensive, multi-level policy interventions targeting spatial inequalities, financial exclusion, institutional barriers, and patriarchal household structures concurrently