Gender and Constraints to Entrepreneurship in Africa: New Evidence from Swaziland

Zuzana Brixiová Schwidrowski and Thierry Kangoye ()
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Thierry Kangoye: African Development Bank

No 9273, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper contributes to closing a knowledge gap on gender, entrepreneurship and development by linking the entrepreneurial productivity to start-up capital and skills. The empirical analysis of a survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland confirmed the importance of start-up capital for sales. Women entrepreneurs have smaller start-up capital and are less likely to fund it from the formal sector than their men counterparts, pointing to a possible room for policy interventions. Further, business training is positively associated with sales performance of men entrepreneurs, but has no effect on women. However, this does not call for abolishing training programs for women entrepreneurs. Instead their design and targeting should be revisited.

Keywords: skills; start-up capital; gender and entrepreneurship; training; multivariate analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L53 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cse, nep-dev, nep-ent, nep-ger and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2016, 5, 1- 8

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Related works:
Journal Article: Gender and constraints to entrepreneurship in Africa: New evidence from Swaziland (2016)
Working Paper: Gender and Constraints to Entrepreneurship in Africa: New Evidence from Swaziland (2015)
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