Microcredit: an answer to the gender problem in funding?

Sophie Brana

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Microfinance institutions (MFIs) target poor people, excluded from the banking system. By giving them starting capital, they should thus enable a greater number of women to create their own business, but also in sectors traditionally reserved for men due to the initial capital they require. Our study covers a portfolio of 3,640 microcredits in France over the 2000-2006 period. It identifies microfinance institutions' client profiles, brings to light the men/women differences and compares them to a wider sample of entrepreneurs. We show that the men/women gap found amongst company creators is maintained amongst clients of MFIs. We also demonstrate that the gender criterion is a decisive factor of the amount of the microcredit when compared to the borrower and firm profile. To a certain extent, MFI thus reproduce gender inequalities.

Keywords: Microcredit; Gender; Entrepreneurship; Small business.; Small business (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-01-10
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00740098
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00740098/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Microcredit: an answer to the gender problem in funding? (2013)
Working Paper: Microcredit: an answer to the gender problem in funding? (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00740098

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().