Breaking the Metal Ceiling: Female Entrepreneurs Who Succeed in Male-Dominated Sectors

“…Sole-income earners were a significant proportion of the ultra-poor women in Bangladesh who transformed their occupations as result of the capital and training provided by BRAC. Female headship was a characteristic trait of women farmers in Malawi and urban entrepreneurs in Uganda who successfully crossed over from lower-value to high-value production, (Dimova and Gang 2013;Campos et al 2013).…”

Section: Female Autonomy Helpsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment: What Works?

Buvinić¹,

Furst-Nichols²

2014

Policy Research Working Papers

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A review of rigorous evaluations of interventions that seek to empower women economically shows that the same class of interventions has significantly different outcomes depending on the client. Capital alone, as a small cash loan or grant, is not sufficient to grow women-owned subsistence-level firms. However, it can work if it is delivered in-kind to more successful women microentrepreneurs, and it should boost the performance of women's larger-sized SMEs. Very poor women need a more intensive package of services than do less poor women to break out of subsistence production and grow their businesses. What works for young women does not necessarily work for adult women. Skills training, job search assistance, internships, and wage subsidies increase the employment levels of adult women but do not raise wages. However, similar interventions increase young women's employability and earnings if social restrictions are not binding. Women who run subsistence-level firms face additional social constraints when compared to similar men, thus explaining the differences in the outcomes of some loans, grants, and training interventions that favor men. Social constraints may also play a role in explaining women's outcome gains that are short-lasting or emerge with a delay. The good news is that many of the additional constraints that women face can be overcome by simple, inexpensive adjustments in program design that lessen family and social pressures. These include providing capital in-kind or transacted through the privacy of a mobile phone and providing secure savings accounts to nudge women to keep the money in the business rather than to divert it to non-business uses. JEL Codes: J16, J24, L25, L26, M53, O12The observed disparity between the sexes in productivity and earnings is persistent and pervasive. The value added per worker is between 6 percent and 35 percent lower in female-owned than in male-owned firms; female-managed farms are 20 percent to 80 percent less productive than male-managed farms; in the workplace, The World Bank Research Observer Interventions were assessed according to the strength of empirical evidence. They were judged as proven when the evidence was robust, with more than one credible evaluation yielding similar results across different settings or circumstances. Promising interventions were backed by positive findings from one credible study or its equivalent. Unproven interventions yielded no evidence of positive effects on productivity and earnings for the categories of women and settings evaluated.Measuring changes in the productivity and earnings of individual women is straightforward conceptually but much less so practically, especially for women in low-income settings who farm or are self-employed and have highly variable earnings (Rosenzweig 2012; World Bank 2013). In response, many of the studies reviewed used a variety of intermediate outcomes for women working in selfemployment and farming, including growth in women's physical and financial assets, improvements in the stability of...

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“…The lack of access to certain positions, occupations or industries creates informational barriers for women that can contribute to the perpetuation of disparities, even in the absence of legal restrictions. This concept is supported by evidence from Uganda, which indicates that lack of information about opportunities in male-dominated sectors explains gender differences in sector choice [10].…”

Section: Unequal Rights and Access To Informationmentioning

confidence: 82%

Gender differences in wages and leadership

Macis¹

2017

izawol

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Breaking the Metal Ceiling: Female Entrepreneurs Who Succeed in Male-Dominated Sectors

Abstract: This study is reproduced with World Bank permission within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Gender and development'.

Cited by 30 publications

References 6 publications

The Recent Growth Boom in Developing Economies: A Structural Change Perspective

The Recent Growth Boom in Developing Economies: A Structural Change Perspective

Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment: What Works?

Gender differences in wages and leadership

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