ABSTRACT

Despite an increase in the share of female-owned existing and new start-up firms in Senegal, there is still wide belief that female entrepreneurs are discriminated against in the credit market. This paper empirically investigates such gender-based discrimination, and the extent to which it might be translated into lower performance. Using firm-level data and a methodological approach that consists of the data envelopment analysis, an endogenous switching regression and a propensity score matching, the paper suggests that there is no such thing as gender-based discrimination, and to the extent that they benefit from credit, female reap equal returns from the funds, efficiency-wise. These results do not however call for the abandonment of gender-biased public policies aiming at promoting access to credit and entrepreneurship, but suggest they be grounded on more robust footings such as managers’ education, firms’ ownership, sectorial activities, and geographical locations.

摘要

尽管塞内加尔女性拥有的现有和新创业公司的比例有所增加，但人们仍然普遍认为女性企业家在信贷市场上受到歧视。本文实证研究了这种基于性别的歧视，以及它可能在多大程度上转化为较低的绩效。该论文使用公司层面的数据和由数据包络分析、内生转换回归和倾向得分匹配组成的方法论方法，表明不存在基于性别的歧视，并且在某种程度上他们受益于信贷，女性从资金中获得同等回报，效率方面。然而，这些结果并不要求放弃旨在促进获得信贷和创业的具有性别偏见的公共政策，