Gender and Entrepreneurship Workshop Capacity Building for Implementation of the GAP in ECA by Sarosh Sattar Senior Economist October 23, 2008

Gender and Entrepreneurship

WorkshopCapacity Building for Implementation of the GAP in

ECAby

Sarosh SattarSenior EconomistOctober 23, 2008

Workshop on Capacity Building for Implementation of the GAP in ECA

2

Outline

How to think about entrepreneurship? Why care about entrepreneurship? Definition Literature on entrepreneurship

Some basic questions for the ECA region

Some preliminary findings


3

Why care about entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship contributes to economic growth and leaps

in human progress offers potential of greater wealth and

upward mobility provides an alternative to wage

employment


4

Defining entrepreneurship

Many definitions Anyone who is working for themselves

and retains profits Anyone who owns an enterprise with

workers Anyone who owns an enterprise with

workers for at least 1-3 years


5

Literature on entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Intention

Social Capita

l

Human

Capital

Attitude

Subjective norm

Perceived behavioral control

Actual involveme

nt in Entrepre-neurship

Autonomy

Financial success

Status


6

Some relevant questions on entrepreneurship

Can household characteristics explain why women are less likely to be self-employed than men? Are households maximizing welfare through risk

mitigation policies? Do women face different constraints to

entrepreneurship than men? Are women harassed more than men? Are women more averse to paying bribes than men? Are legal or illegal hurdles too costly for women’s time?

Do female-owned firms perform comparably to male-owned firms?

Preliminary Findings


8

Fewer women entrepreneurs and self-employed

Female-Male Participation (Worked in past 12 months) Ratio by Region

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

bulg

aria

czec

hrep

esto

nia

hung

ary

latv

ia

lithu

ania

pola

nd

rom

ania

slov

akia

slov

enia

alba

nia

bosn

ia

croa

tia

fyro

m

mon

tene

gro

serb

ia

arm

enia

azer

baija

n

geor

gia

kyrg

yzst

an

mol

dova

tajik

ista

n

uzbe

kist

an

bela

rus

kaza

khst

an

russ

ia

ukra

ine

mon

golia

turk

ey

EU Balkan CIS-low CIS-mid Oth

Fem

ale-

Mal

e R

atio

Wage employment Self employment


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Women run smaller operations

Breakdown of establishments (self employed / partially or fully owned company) by gender and

firm size

01020

30405060

7080

Own Account firm (no hired employees)

1 to 5 more than 5

# of employees excluding household members

% o

f fir

ms

(sel

f em

ploy

ed)

Female Male


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Main Findings on Firm size

Significant gender bias in firm size ( # of employees) against women

Secondary education is important for women, positively correlated with the firm size

Women face red tape barriers, for them firm size is significant and positively related with paying bribe

Being in a civic group does not help women having a larger firm compared to men

Being employed in the same field where they got formal training does not help women having a larger firm compared to men

Women tend to have own larger firms in high income regions


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BEEPS data on formal enterprises show that…

Women owned firms are smaller scaled operations in terms of sales

revenues generate more profit per unit of sales revenue have higher returns to scale which means that

women would gain more from increasing their firm size

This could be because women are capital constrained concentrated in industries with small firm size

Some questions


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Interesting questions

Why do women concentrate in certain sectors (services rather than manufacturing)?

Is the capital constraint self-imposed or does it reflect bias in the financial system?

Do lower entrepreneurship rates among women reflect personal choice or economic constraints?

What encourages women to take the step into entrepreneurship?

Documents

Gender and Entrepreneurship Workshop Capacity Building for Implementation of the GAP in ECA by Sarosh Sattar Senior Economist October 23, 2008