Publication: Supporting Growth-Oriented Women Entrepreneurs: A Review of the Evidence and Key Challenges
Date
2014-09
ISSN
Published
2014-09
Author(s)
Abstract
In recent years, support programs for
women entrepreneurs have gained traction and prominence as a
means to create jobs and boost productivity at the national
and regional levels. However, disparities in initial
resource endowments of male and female-led firms, sector
sorting into low productivity activities, social norms, and
institutional arrangements, constrain the growth of
female-led enterprises. This note reviews the outcomes of
programs supporting female growth entrepreneurs and draws
lessons from available evidence to inform the design of more
effective programs. The review shows that most programs are
primarily geared toward microenterprises, making it
difficult to draw conclusions about program design for
growth-oriented entrepreneurs, but some early findings point
the way forward. Management practices appear to improve as a
result of business education, but there is little robust
evidence to prove that support programs lead to significant
improvements in business performance outcomes. Furthermore,
in programs with both male and female participants, firm
performance improves in some cases for male-led firms only,
not for female-led firms. The note concludes by suggesting
the need for more experimentation in the design and delivery
of services and a new focus on strengthening the engendering
of support programs to more specifically address
gender-specific constraints such as social norms,
entrepreneurial preferences, and institutional arrangements,
changing public discourse, and paying more attention to
factors that induce female entrepreneurs to diversify into
higher value-added activities. Offering mentoring,
networking, and other consulting services, in addition to
education on basic business practices and strengthening
critical areas such as gender-specific content, can
potentially increase the effectiveness of these programs.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Cirera, Xavier; Qasim, Qursum. 2014. Supporting Growth-Oriented Women Entrepreneurs: A Review of the Evidence and Key Challenges. Innovation, technology and entrepreneurship
policy note;no. 5. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23654 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”