Wesa Gloria Asati

Brief Background
Women, especially in developing countries bear an unequal share of the burden of poverty. Microfinance helps the poor to borrow for business expansion, to save and buy other relevant products like micro insurance and to improve their standards of living. (Stotsky, 2006). Women’s access to finance especially at the small and medium enterprise level is a major constraint to start and expand businesses. Women therefore face tighter constraints in terms of the cost of and access to finance. Majority of the loan applications rejections are based on the lack of acceptable collateral, a major constraint for women (Nasr, 2010).

Problem Statement
Securing capital for business start up or business operation is one of the major obstacles of every entrepreneur particularly in the MSE sector but women entrepreneurs face additional constraints to secure financial resources (Wole, 2009).

The most commonly accepted tangible form of collateral is land. However, many women do not own property that can be exploited as collateral because gender relationships play a central role (Dowuona-Hammond, 2007). In addition, women entrepreneurs are often prevented from running competitive businesses by their relatively low education and skill levels, which generally limit their access to the various support and credit services (Cutura, 2007). Even when they have access to information on the financial services and market opportunities available to them, women may be less equipped to comprehend it due to low levels of literacy (UNDP, 2007). 

Research Methodology
The research study incorporated the use of descriptive research design and the population of study comprised of women owned MSEs in Sabatia and Musanda market in Butere/Mumias District. The study adopted stratified random sampling approach to select a sample of 98 and a researcher administered questionnaire was used to facilitate the acquisition of primary data. Data was analyzed by the use of descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of SPSS and thereafter presented in the form of tables.

Results
The study established that information accessibility does influence micro credit access among the rural women hence the study rejected the null hypothesis (information accessibility does not influence micro credit access) since the chi-square statistic was less than 0.05 (0.000). On the other hand, education level of the rural women does not influence micro credit access hence acceptance of the null hypothesis since the significance level for the chi-square statistic was greater than 0.05 (0.740). Additionally, control over assets and property rights does not influence micro credit access among the rural women and thus the null hypothesis was therefore accepted as the significance level for the chi-square statistic greater than 0.05 (0.636).