From Resource Access to Enterprise Resilience: A Resource-Activation Framework for Rural Women Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Purpose. Rural women entrepreneurship is often discussed through separate themes such as finance, digitalisation, social support, skills, market access and empowerment. This paper argues that the more important question is how rural women convert dispersed resources into usable entrepreneurial capacity and, finally, into business resilience. The paper develops a new conceptual framework that connects Resource Access, Resource Activation Capability, Entrepreneurial Agency, Market Embeddedness and Enterprise Resilience, while recognising contextual frictions as a boundary condition. Design and approach. The paper follows an integrative conceptual review of open-access literature with DOI identifiers on women entrepreneurship, rural enterprise, financial inclusion, social capital, digital capability, entrepreneurial agency, market access and resilience. Evidence from India and comparable emerging-economy settings is synthesised rather than statistically pooled. Findings. The proposed framework distinguishes between having access to a resource and being able to activate it for business use. It argues that digital, financial, social and institutional resources become consequential when women can combine and deploy them through a resource-activation capability. This capability is expected to strengthen entrepreneurial agency, which in turn supports market embeddedness and enterprise resilience. Five postulates are developed, including a negative boundary role for contextual frictions such as mobility restrictions, care responsibilities, procedural complexity and restrictive social expectations. Originality/value. The paper offers a resource-to-resilience explanation that is different from models that treat finance, technology, social capital or empowerment as isolated predictors. It shifts attention from resource possession to resource activation and from short-term entrepreneurial entry to the capacity to remain connected, adaptive and viable in changing rural markets. The framework is intended to provide a testable basis for future CB-SEM, PLS-SEM and longitudinal research on rural women entrepreneurs in India.