Gender and Enterprise Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of Constraints and Effective Interventions

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Female Entrepreneurs

“…In Sub-Saharan Africa, only about one-third of the productivity gap is explained by differences in the types of businesses women run: smaller firms, firms that are unaffiliated with other businesses, and firms that are not registered (Aterido, Hallward-Driemeier and Pagés, 2011). In Uganda, a small sample mixed-methods study by Campos and Gassier (2015) find that when women cross over into male-dominated sectors, they attain higher returns than women in female-dominated sectors. In other words, the returns in male-dominated sectors are high not only for men.…”

“…In many African countries the law gives husbands sole control over marital property (World Bank Group, 2015). Other legal provisions restrict women's ability to buy, own, sell and use property to finance their businesses (Campos and Gassier, 2015). Many countries have restrictions on inheritance of property.…”

“…We intentionally do not discuss evidence on impact of various policies because several good reports already do that (i.e. Buvinic and O'Donnell, 2016;Campos and Gassier, 2015). Instead, our goal is more modest: to demonstrate how our conceptual framework can be used to inform policies.…”

Unrealized Potential

“…Especially in low income countries, women's employment is informal, with self-employment being the most common type of work, and a large share of women still work in the agricultural sector. Women farmers and entrepreneurs consistently produce less and generate less income than their male counterparts (World Bank andONE, 2014, Campos andGassier, 2017). This reflects both unequal access to inputs and lower returns to these inputs.…”

“…Promising initiatives include the promotion of alternative collateral through moveable asset registries, the use of payment histories for services such as cell phones, and psychometric testing to assess lenders' risk (Buehren et al, forthcoming). In addition, as women may face larger difficulties to keep business/farm and household finances separate, health insurance products help to avoid depleting working capital when responding to family health needs (Campos and Gassier, 2017).…”