Does gender matter in financing SMEs in green industry?

Abstract

This study explores gender differentiation in access to credit which penalizes Italian female-led green SMEs compared to male-led ones. We carry out a panel analysis with 184,425 observations, of which 5855 refer to green firms, observing how the percentage of women among directors and managers (PWDM) affects access to bank credit and its costs. Our results demonstrate that green SMEs show different levels of financial debt compared to non-green ones depending on the PWDM. Our paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we investigate whether women-led green SMEs show different demands for financial credit in terms of amounts borrowed and mix between long/short-term bank credit; second, whether this potentially different credit demand is associated with coherent or incoherent effects on the cost of credit; and third, whether the credit demand of women-led green SMEs depends on the PWDM in the company.