Women's Entrepreneurship : How to Measure the Gap between New Female and Male Entrepreneurs?
This paper analyzes data on female and male entrepreneurship that were collected by the World Bank Group's Entrepreneurship Database. Recognizing the importance of a differentiated approach to entrepreneurship in terms of legal entities, the d...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/704231510669093889/Womens-entrepreneurship-how-to-measure-the-gap-between-new-female-and-male-entrepreneurs http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28902 |
| Summary: | This paper analyzes data on female and
male entrepreneurship that were collected by the World Bank
Group's Entrepreneurship Database. Recognizing the
importance of a differentiated approach to entrepreneurship
in terms of legal entities, the data on female and male
business owners are collected at the level of limited
liability companies and sole proprietorships. Forty-four of
the 143 economies that participated in the Entrepreneurship
project provided some sex-disaggregated data for 2016. The
paper finds that the gender gap in business ownership
remains high in many economies around the world. In the
majority of the analyzed economies, less than one-third of
new limited liability company owners are women. Although
sole proprietorships are more frequently used by female
entrepreneurs, only three economies have similar or equal
number of women business owners relative to men. The gap in
female entrepreneurship is especially apparent in low-income
economies, where women are much less likely than men to
start a new business. The paper also provides new insights
into the relationship between female entrepreneurship and
various institutional factors, including women's
financial inclusion, the gender gap in education, and legal
rights disparities. The analysis suggests a need to expand
the collection of sex-disaggregated data, to trace the
economies' progress in narrowing the existing gender
gap in entrepreneurship. |
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