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Female and Mother Household Heads Get Smaller, Shorter Loans in Rural Thailand and Vietnam

1 hour ago
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Smaller, shorter loans for rural mothers — and how entrepreneurship narrows the gap. Across rural Thailand and Vietnam, female and mother household heads receive smaller loans and shorter maturities on average. The gaps concentrate among women without businesses and narrow, though not always vanish, among entrepreneurs. Chung Thanh Phan (HAPRI Research Associate), Thuy Minh To and Diem Thi Hong Vo. Illustrative photo: in a small home-based shop in rural Vietnam, a woman sits at a wooden table beside a loan officer. They go over blank loan papers with a calculator while a toddler plays nearby. Rice fields are blurred through the open doorway.

Female and Mother Household Heads Get Smaller, Shorter Loans in Rural Thailand and Vietnam

A study co-authored by Chung Thanh Phan (HAPRI Research Associate), Thuy Minh To and Diem Thi Hong Vo documents persistent disadvantages for female and mother household heads in rural Thailand and Vietnam, who receive shorter maturities and smaller loans on average, with these gaps concentrated among women without businesses. The authors present evidence on how entrepreneurship can mitigate, but does not always eliminate, gender- and caregiving-related disadvantages in rural Southeast Asian credit markets.


Context

Gender disparities in rural credit markets persist, yet evidence remains limited on how caregiving responsibilities and entrepreneurship-related information signals jointly shape loan contracts.


The study takes an intersectional lens linking gender, motherhood and entrepreneurship, and analyses two distinct credit margins together: loan amount and loan maturity. It also compares the two countries.


Penalties remain pronounced in Thailand
Penalties remain pronounced in Thailand

Methods

The authors use nine survey waves (2007–2022) of the Thailand-Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (TVSEP) covering rural households, with 31,642 household-year observations and 9,068 business-year observations. They study loan amount and loan maturity among household-years with realised borrowing. They estimate linear models with province-by-year fixed effects and household-clustered inference, and add matching and within-household panel specifications.


Key findings

  • Female and mother household heads face persistent disadvantages: on average, they receive shorter maturities and smaller loans.

  • These gaps are concentrated among women without businesses, while they attenuate among female and mother entrepreneurs.

  • Across the two countries, penalties remain pronounced in Thailand but are often statistically indistinguishable for female entrepreneurs in Vietnam.

  • The authors present evidence that entrepreneurship can mitigate, but does not always eliminate, gender- and caregiving-related disadvantages in rural Southeast Asian credit markets.


How the study was done
How the study was done

Keywords:

  • Gender and Rural Credit

  • Motherhood

  • Entrepreneurship

  • Microfinance and Financial Inclusion

  • Loan Maturity

  • Thailand and Vietnam


Link:


Citation:

Phan, C. T., To, T. M., & Vo, D. T. H. (2026). Motherhood, Entrepreneurship, and Credit Terms: Evidence from Rural Thailand and Vietnam. The Journal of Development Studies, 1-28.

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