The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity...

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Main Authors:	Torres, Jesica, Maduko, Franklin, Gaddis, Isis, Iacovone, Leonardo, Beegle, Kathleen
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:	CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT FIRM PERFORMANCE FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ENTREPRENEURSHIP GENDER GAP MICROENTERPRISES SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/808641635211295483/The-Impact-of-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-on-Women-Led-Businesses http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36435

id	okr-10986-36435
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-364352022-02-07T15:14:56Z The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses Torres, Jesica Maduko, Franklin Gaddis, Isis Iacovone, Leonardo Beegle, Kathleen CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT FIRM PERFORMANCE FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ENTREPRENEURSHIP GENDER GAP MICROENTERPRISES SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories. 2021-10-28T16:33:19Z 2021-10-28T16:33:19Z 2021-10 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/808641635211295483/The-Impact-of-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-on-Women-Led-Businesses http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36435 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9817 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT FIRM PERFORMANCE FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ENTREPRENEURSHIP GENDER GAP MICROENTERPRISES SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES
spellingShingle	CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT FIRM PERFORMANCE FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ENTREPRENEURSHIP GENDER GAP MICROENTERPRISES SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES Torres, Jesica Maduko, Franklin Gaddis, Isis Iacovone, Leonardo Beegle, Kathleen The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9817
description	The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories.
format	Working Paper
author	Torres, Jesica Maduko, Franklin Gaddis, Isis Iacovone, Leonardo Beegle, Kathleen
author_facet	Torres, Jesica Maduko, Franklin Gaddis, Isis Iacovone, Leonardo Beegle, Kathleen
author_sort	Torres, Jesica
title	The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
title_short	The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
title_full	The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
title_fullStr	The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
title_full_unstemmed	The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
title_sort	impact of the covid-19 pandemic on women-led businesses
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2021
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/808641635211295483/The-Impact-of-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-on-Women-Led-Businesses http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36435
_version_	1764485243893448704

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses

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