Gender productivity gap: does gender-equal ownership compensate for female entrepreneurs’ lack of prior industry experience?

Douwere Grekou (), Jenny Watt and Horatio Morgan ()
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Douwere Grekou: Statistics Canada

Small Business Economics, 2023, vol. 60, issue 4, No 11, 1543-1571

Abstract: Abstract Female entrepreneurs often have less prior industry knowledge or experience than male entrepreneurs. To ameliorate the adverse consequences for business performance, they could equally co-own ventures with their experienced male peers. Using a representative sample of 183,358 new ventures in Canada, we explore this under-investigated issue by analyzing the labour productivity of women-owned and equally-owned ventures, relative to men-owned ventures, from 2006 to 2017. We also quantify the influence of the principal owners’ prior industry experience on the relative labour productivity of women-owned and equally-owned ventures. Our regression analyses show that women-owned and equally-owned ventures are 16.5% and 5.9% less productive than men-owned ventures, respectively. We also confirm that women-owned ventures realize productivity gains from having experienced female owners. Meanwhile, we find that equally-owned ventures yield productivity gains only when they comprise experienced male co-owners and inexperienced female co-owners. More generally, we contribute new evidence-based insights on the gender productivity gap and why gender-equal ownership can help.

Keywords: Firm performance; Gender-equal ownership; Gender productivity gap; Labour productivity; Prior industry experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 L25 L26 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-022-00659-w

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