Female Entrepreneurship Flashcards
(16 cards)
Give some intuitive facts behind the motivation for studying female entrepreneurship.
- Women’s entrepreneurship can promote economic growth & empowerment but a **gender gap in entrepreneurial activity, firm size and firm performance ** persists
- women in SSA are more likely entrepreneurs/self-employed than in other regions of the world
- Potential knock-on effect to women female entrepreneurs could employ (75% of employees in women-led enterprises are women)
What are constraints for women entrepreneurs?
- Competing demands on women’s time
- Inadequate or mismatched skills
- Barriers to accessing capital and credit
- Limited access to business networks and markets
- restrictive gender norms
Explain the background to Sri’s paper on Gender Discrimination in Entrepreneurial Finance
Motivation:
* lack of access to sufficient entrepreneurial finance as key determinant for women entrepreneurs
* Financing disproportionally flows to male-led firms
* Gender gap in VC and PE
* often attributed to inaccurate perceptions and evaluation of risk due to gender discrimination
What is the setup behind Sri’s paper on Gender Discrimination in Entrepreunerial Finance
- lab-in-the-field experiment in Ethiopia
- audit study desing to measure gender discrimination in entrepreneurial funding decisions
- Usage of “Ethopia Emerges”: actor record mock business pitchs that keep the business idea of the pitch constant but vary the gender of the entrepreneur, sector and pitch quality
- Sectors: cafe/ restaurant (female-dominated), textiles (gender-neutral) construction (male-dominated)
- Study participants: students in VT and credit officers at large microfinance institutions
- this measures implicit bias among viewers
What is the research question to Sri’s paper on Gender Discrimination and Entrepreneurial finance?
Main research question:
* Can we isolate a gender/ sector effect in funding decisions?
* Are men and women in non-traditional sectors rewarded or punished in funding decisions?
* Any evidence of gender homophily?
Secondary research:
* Do perceptions of female and male entrepreneurs differ?
* Are womena nd men judged differently at different pitch quality levels?
* Are there add-ons thst can help transport “gender messaging”?
Explain the empirical strategy behind Sri’s paper on Gender Discrimination and Entrepreneurial finance?
Y = ß_0 + ß_1 Malepitch + ß_2 X’ + λ_s + e
where Y: outcome variables as reported by viewer, Malepitch is a dummy for a male entrepreneur shown, X’: vector of control variables (sectors, gender of the viewer, etc.), λ_s: Dummy for randomization strata (trade and gender)
What are the findings in Sri’s paper on Gender Discrimination and Entrepreneurial finance?
- Limited evidence of average gender discrimination in recommended investment
- Sector matters: gender-neutral and male-dominated sectors attract greater recommended investment, relative to female-dominated sector
- We find gender discrimination within sectors where women are typically underrepresented
- Overall, female viewers are more likely to recommend investments than male viewers, No evidence of gender homophily
- higher recommended investments in construction and textiles relative to the café business
- the male pitch attracts higher average recommended investment than the female pitch in construction and textiles, but not in the food services sector
- female students have a stronger implicit bias for Male with Career and Female with familiy than male students
-> findings are consistent with discrimination against women in male-dominated sectros and discrimination in women’s favor in female-dominated sectors
-> viewers perceieve men as more successful, better negotiators and leaders than women pitching the same idea in business sectors where women are traditionally underrepresented
-> MFI Credit officers: results on sector consistent with VT students, whereby construction attracts greater investment than the other sectors (true for female pitch only)
-> role model add-on increases likelihood of investment for female and male pitch
What is the motivation behind Sri’s paper on Expanding access to finance to women-owned firms in Nigeria?
- women entrepreneurs are often more credit-constrained, especially for larger, individual-liability, longer, more flexible loans
- Key barrier: lack of collateral
What is the setup of Sri’s paper on Expanding access to finance to women-owned firms in Nigeria?
- Collaboration with a Nigerian bank to evaluate a product where entrepreneurs are approved for large loans using information from cashflow in their business as substitute for collateral
- RCT to evaluate the impact of these loans: different messaging send to women and men (randomly sent information via text message)
What is the research question of Sri’s paper on Expanding access to finance to women-owned firms in Nigeria?
Does offering a relatively large, uncollateralized loan alleviate credit constraints for women entrepreneurs?
What is the impact on firm survival?
What is the impact on firm performance?
Name the key findings of Sri’s paper on Expanding access to finance to women-owned firms in Nigeria?
- 73% of male and 80% of female entrepreneurs were interested in visitng the application online portal
- Neither including a simple gender nudge nor a no collateral nudge increased women’s interest in the product
- Telling men the product is “quick and easy” makes them less likely to want to learn more about the product
- explicitly mentioning the interest rate reduces appetite for the product
- When given information, women entrepreneurs demonstrate interest in financial products
What is the setup and the findings of the pilot cohort regarding the CFL impact of Sri’s paper on Expanding access to finance to women-owned firms in Nigeria?
- Sample of 214 business owners
- Randomization into 3 treatment arms (CFL, CFL + dynamic incentive, no loan)
Findings: - Per RCT, CBL increased, for women only, access to formal credit by 14%, invstment in working capital by 150%
- Per RCT, Dynamic incentive increased for women only, capital investment by 80%
What is the motivation of Sri’s paper on conscious coupling?
- intrahousehold constraints a key contributor to the gender gap in firm performance
- husbands found to be key stakeholder and influential in women’s businesses
- Limited research on interventions at encouraging men to engage in their wives’ businesses
Give a brief overview behind the setup of Sri’s paper on conscious coupling?
- Mixed methods paper: RCT & qualitative data
where
RCT: Digital Opportunity Trust ScaleUp! Busienss Training - 3 Treatments groups: Control group, training (women alone) (T1), training + couples (T2)
- Training: 6 classroom coaching sessions over 6 months
- new curriculum incorporates a couples’ intervention (for effective communication techniques, resource allocation, empathy)
- Focus on urban women entrepreneurs
Define the empirical strategy (regression) of Sri’s paper on conscious coupling.
Y_it = ß_0 + ß_1 T1_i + ß_2 T2_i + ß_3 Y_i0 + ß_4 ‘X_i0 + λ_c + e_it
where
Y_it outcome variable of individual i measued at endline
T1_i: dummy for T1 training
T2_i dummy for T2 training
X_i0: vector of demographic controls
λ_c: randomization city FE
What are the findings of Sri’s paper on conscious coupling.
ATE:
* no evidence of an average effect on business performance, socio-emotional skills, marriage quality, husband’s support
* positive impacts on business practices, women’s autonomy over business decisions and subjective satisfaction in business from T1 and T2
Heteogeneity Analysis:
* interesting impacts by above and below median profits: less profitable firms at baseline show improvements in business performance from the T2 trainings (Potential mechanism: positive impact on women’s autonomy over business decisions, higher negotiation skills and leads to more time spent on her business)
