"Using data on the entire population of businesses registered in the states of California and Massachusetts between 1995 and 2011, we decompose the well-established gender gap in entrepreneurship. We show that female- led ventures are 63 percentage points less likely than male-led ventures to obtain external funding (i.e., venture capital). The most significant portion of the gap (65 percent) stems from gender differences in initial startup orientation, with women being less likely to found ventures that signal growth potential to external investors. However, the residual gap is as much as 35 percent and much of this disparity likely reflects investors' gendered preferences. Consistent with theories of statistical discrimination, the residual gap diminishes significantly when stronger signals of growth are available to investors for comparable female- and male-led ventures or when focal investors appear to be more sophisticated. Finally, conditional on the reception of external funds (i.e., venture capital), women and men are equally likely to achieve exit outcomes, through IPOs or acquisitions."

"This paper studies the aggregate effects of the existing differences between male and female-run firms in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Using data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey and the International Labor Organization (ILO), we show that only about one-fourth of the total firms are run by women and that female-run firms are about three times smaller than male-run firms in LAC. We then extend the theoretical framework in Cuberes and Teignier (2016) to account for these facts and quantify their aggregate effects on productivity and income per capita. In our model, men and women are identical in all aspects except for the fact that some women face barriers to becoming entrepreneurs, which may be a function of their talent. The calibration of our model implies that the barriers that some women face to becoming firm managers depend positively on their managerial talent, which results in female-run firms being smaller than those managed by men in equilibrium. In our baseline simulation, we obtain an output per capita loss due to these gender gaps of 9.4 percent, all of which is due to misallocation of resources and the resulting fall in aggregate productivity. This loss is 1.3 times larger than the one obtained in a framework where barriers to entrepreneurship were assumed to be independent of talent."

"We seek to examine founder gender preferences in the context of equity crowdfunding, which represents a direct counterpart to traditional equity financing and which is a "higher-stakes" context than rewards-based crowdfunding. More specifically, we explore whether founder gender preferences, if they exist, vary based on the gender and the experience of the investor. Through a randomized field experiment, we find that inexperienced female investors are significantly more interested (138%) in ventures with female founders than those with male founders; however, we do not observe founder gender preferences among experienced female investors. For male investors, we do not observe differences in interest in investing based on founder gender or investor experience. We thus confirm that the gender gaps observed in traditional equity funding do not apply to equity crowdfunding. Further, we theorize that the mechanisms proposed in previous research in low-stakes crowdfunding decision contexts, such as the use of founder gender as a heuristic and participation in activism homophily, that drive female investors to prefer female founders may not apply to experienced investors in higher-stakes equity crowdfunding. The results from a follow-up survey of the study participants provide support for our theoretical arguments."

"The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) toolkit is an interactive resource, to guide accelerators and incubators (or 'intermediaries') through the journey of uncovering how our activities impact, and are experienced by, different gendered groups. This toolkit will equip us as intermediaries with the mindset, strategies, and frameworks to amend and improve both our organisation and program to increase accessibility and inclusivity of our work by all genders."

"This study is the first piece of detailed research on gender lens investing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It adds to other regional analyses of gender lens investing emerging in the last few years in Asia and in Europe (authored by the same team as this report at the ESADE Institute for Social Innovation). The specific objectives of the study are to: describe the opportunity for different gender lens investing strategies in LAC; highlight key case studies and current activities in LAC; and offer top-level recommendations for how different players can put gender lens investing into practice."

"We combine a Randomized Control Trial and a lab-in-the-field experiment to explore how participating in an 'entrepreneurship and gender' training affects the intra-household bargaining position of women. While male preferences dominate household decisions, the training attenuates the bargaining gap considerably. Inviting husbands to participate in the training does not further improve outcomes."

"We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions."

"Investigating what characterizes women’s entrepreneurship and what type of enterprise development support they need sheds light on the importance of understanding what drives exclusion and inclusion in social, political and economic processes in societies. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by discussing the importance and practicalities of gender-aware WED. Gender-aware WED recognizes the gendered risks and uncertainties in which women operate their businesses and assists women in coping with these insecurities at home, in the community and in the business environment. In addition, it strives to create a level playing field by ensuring access to, and control over, resources and opportunities for all entrepreneurs, regardless of business type, industry choice, gender, age, health status, location or ethnicity."

"Small and medium-sized enterprises make up a large part of Sri Lanka's economy, with over one million SMEs accounting for approximately 75 percent of all businesses. These are found in all sectors of the economy and are estimated to contribute about 45 percent of total employment in Sri Lanka. Women's ownership of formal small and medium-sized enterprises is low, at around 25 percent of all SMEs, and most women business-owners struggle to transition away from informal micro-scale businesses, in part due to limited access to finance and lower business capacity of women entrepreneurs. This report presents a snapshot of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) across Sri Lanka, with a focus on the different impacts experienced by women-owned and managed businesses (WSME), as compared to those owned by men (MSME) and those owned jointly by a woman and a man (JSME)."

"This report proposes actions that can be taken by ASEAN Governments and key stakeholders to address the constraints facing women entrepreneurs. Two key levers for change are highlighted. These are greater access to and use of innovative technologies, especially those made available through the ICT revolution; and creative approaches to making finance and credit available to women entrepreneurs. As well as being critical in their own right, these two levers also contribute to unlocking progress in other key areas, such as education and training, access to business support and networks and opening market opportunities."