7.0 Conclusions: Gender Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Africa 2007

This chapter shows that both men and women are active as entrepreneurs in Africa, and their enterprises share many common characteristics. For the select sample of manufacturing and service sector entrepreneurs captured in the Enterprise Surveys, the analysis reveals surprisingly little difference between men and women entrepreneurs.

There are some differences in the type of businesses in which men and women are engaged, and some differences in perceived constraints. However, these differences are often quite small and are not consistently associated with specific countries, sectors, or types of business.

Because this chapter finds such small differences between men and women entrepreneurs along the dimensions analyzed here, it may be tempting to conclude that there is little to be gained from addressing entrepreneurship in Africa through a gender lens.

This would be a mistake, as even the absence of differences—

for example, with respect to firm performance—is an important and positive finding.This analysis brings to light several important findings that are relevant for strengthening Africa’s competitiveness and entrepreneurship:

• Women entrepreneurs are more likely than their male counterparts to be engaged in family enterprises.

They are also generally younger and less likely to be married.

In recent years, it seems to have become easier for women to enter into entrepreneurship.

This suggests that family dynamics play an important role in entrepreneurship in Africa, and that these dynamics are particularly relevant for women entrepreneurs.

The confluence of family and business activity, or, as mentioned earlier, the blurring of the boundary between household and economic activity, suggests that the legal status and rights of women within the family—especially in relation to marriage, inheritance, and property rights—have a bearing on their capacity to engage in entrepreneurial activity.

• Contrary to what one might expect, in the sample analyzed here women are as likely to own large businesses as small ones, and there is no genderdistinct segmentation of women entrepreneurs in terms of the sector of operation or the size and age of the business.

• Women’s businesses are at least as productive as those of their male counterparts, as measured by value-added per worker and TFP.Once men and women entrepreneurs are operating their businesses, the constraints and obstacles they face affect them in largely the same way. Differences based on gender tend to disappear, as shown both in this chapter and in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys in 40 countries.This is further confirmed in the finding that in countries where it is easier overall to start, register, license, and operate a business, there are more women entrepreneurs.

• The absence of significant gender-based barriers in operating a business does not mean that there are no gender-based obstacles to entrepreneurship. It is very likely that barriers to entry into entrepreneurship present greater obstacles for women than for men.

• Consequently, measures aimed at facilitating entry into entrepreneurship through legal, regulatory, and other reforms are likely to have a more positive impact on women entrepreneurs. As shown in the GGA program, priority needs to be given to tackling gender-based legal and regulatory obstacles to starting a business as a specific component of the wider effort to improve the business-enabling environment.

This analysis suggests that complex family dynamics are at work in relation to business activity in ways that are particularly important for women.This raises questions that merit further analysis, such as what decisionmaking power women have, and whether the presence of a male relative in the enterprise either dilutes or facilitates (for example, by mediating access to credit)

the discharge of their managerial responsibility.

A further question concerns the ways in which women manage their “double workday,” including through preferring informal arrangements that are more compatible with their domestic responsibilities.The wider realms of family relations, and of property, marital, and inheritance rights, all have a bearing on the potential and prospects facing women entrepreneurs that are not the same as for men.Though data are very limited, available evidence suggests that there is persistent discrimination against women and greater precariousness of their legal status and rights.

An important arena for further work is to address women’s disadvantage by analyzing other types of data—for example, household surveys, or surveys of informal sector activities. Also, more could be done using Enterprise Surveys if they included more information about observable characteristics of the entrepreneur that are not currently collected—for example, family background (what do parents and spouses do?), the way the firm was acquired, and the role played by men and women in managing the firm. Since sex-disaggregated data on property ownership, assets, and legal rights are lacking, one critical task is to develop statistical and data-gathering capacity in this area.

The finding that there are no or few significant differences between female and male entrepreneurs once they are already operating businesses—in terms of the sectors of operation, the size or age of the business, and the performance and productivity of the business—is encouraging. It suggests, for example, that Africa does indeed have considerable hidden growth potential in its women, and that tapping that potential, including through removal of barriers that exist at entry, and reducing disparities in access to and control of resources by empowering women economically, can make a substantial difference for Africa’s growth and poverty reduction.

If Africa is to remain competitive, and is to tap the full productive potential of all economic actors—male and female—it is important to understand and tackle gender-based barriers to entrepreneurship. Once Enterprise Surveys obtain more information on the background of male and female entrepreneurs, including through larger samples of female entrepreneurs, it will be possible to undertake more robust analysis of the gender dynamics of entrepreneurship in Africa. To learn more about this author, visit World Economic Forum's Website.

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