Women's Entrepreneurship and Household Poverty Reduction: Micro-Level Evidence from Qashqadaryo Region, Uzbekistan

Women's entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as one of the most effective instruments for reducing household poverty, yet the micro-level mechanisms through which it operates remain under-researched in transition economies such as Uzbekistan. This study examines the barriers that delay women's entry into entrepreneurial activity in Qashqadaryo region, Uzbekistan, and interprets the age at which women begin entrepreneurial activity as an inverse proxy for the intensity of the barriers they face. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire survey administered to 120 women entrepreneurs and women aspiring to entrepreneurship between January and March 2024; after data cleaning, 103 valid responses were retained for econometric analysis. A multiple linear regression (ordinary least squares, OLS) model was estimated with eight explanatory variables grouped into motivational, constraint-related, and personality dimensions. The model explains 77.6 percent of the variation in the timing of entrepreneurial entry (R² = 0.776, adjusted R² = 0.763, F = 102.96, p < 0.001) and is free of heteroskedasticity and multicollinearity. Low risk tolerance emerged as the strongest barrier (β = 0.379, p = 0.002), followed by financing difficulty (β = 0.081, p = 0.004) and intense market competition (β = 0.089, p = 0.001). These micro-level findings are consistent with, and reinforced by, a national-level correlation between the female share of individual entrepreneurs and the national poverty rate over 2021-2025 (r = -0.950, R² = 0.902). The results suggest that risk-mitigation training, collateral-free microcredit, and targeted business-skills programs are the interventions most likely to accelerate women's entrepreneurial entry and, through it, household poverty reduction. The paper contributes region-specific micro-econometric evidence to the sparse literature on women's entrepreneurship in Central Asia and offers policy-relevant recommendations for Uzbekistan's poverty reduction strategy.