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Working Paper (2013-06) - The female entrepreneurship

Working Paper (2013-06) - The female entrepreneurship

05/04/13

 

Women entrepreneurs are not as numerous as they should. Does it brake specific female entrepreneurship? Is it of socio-demographic factors such as level of education or number of children, or even more contextual reasons as the economy or the national character? Or brake related to gender stereotypes?

This study shows that there is a "woman factor" all things being equal, that resists consideration of the socio-demographic and contextual. This factor is clearly the result of internalization of barriers to entrepreneurship that women move away from such a project.

However, even taking into account the subjective aspects, there is still a "wife factor" in France. To explain this residual difference between men and women, some avenues are being explored, including differences in risk behavior and less willingness to learn from past motivations despite broadly similar to those of men. Also studied the possible discrimination suffered by the women in the access to finance.

Our analysis reveals no differences in this respect between men and women, but provides the explanation come from a funding request weaker when the contractor is a woman (less ambitious). Finally, companies created by women are deemed to be less sustainable in the early years. A detailed analysis of survival according to the profile of entrepreneurs relativizes this result. In addition, once they have reached a certain size, the businesses run by women are on average more efficient.

All these early works militates in favor of a segmentation of female entrepreneurship, highlighting the heterogeneity of our study should be taken into account. exploitation upcoming most comprehensive databases will be more conclusive in a final version of this document stage. However, it is now possible to specify tracks for public policy aimed at increasing the number of women creators.


Keywords: entrepreneurship, gender, entrepreneurship, public policy, boot innovation.

  • Author s: Claire Bernard, Caroline Le Moign, Jean-Paul Nicolai , Centre for Strategic Analysis, Economics Department Finance
  • No. 2013-06, April 2013

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