Gender Gap In Access Research Articles

Financing female entrepreneurs in cottage, micro, small, and medium enterprises: Evidence from the financial sector in Bangladesh 2010–2018

AbstractThis article examines the challenges and obstacles faced by female entrepreneurs in the cottage, micro, small, and medium enterprise (CMSME) sector in Bangladesh and shows that a combination of legislatory and regulatory reform can mitigate many of the issues that prevent women gaining from, and contributing to, this vital economic sector. Access to finance is found to be the greatest challenge faced by women in starting and operating CMSMEs in Bangladesh. This article explores the significant gender gap in access to formal credit, a gap that impacts negatively on the sector's growth and development. The article uses liberal feminist theory as a framework for analysis of the reforms. Analysis of data collected from banks and financial institutions on CMSME loans (2010–2018) shows that female entrepreneurs are treated significantly differently from men by financial institutions in Bangladesh.

Access to Agri-production Resources and Decision Making: Gender Gap in Odisha

Agriculture remains as a prime source of women's livelihood and women remain as the backbone of agricultural workforce. In spite of women making up the prime workforce in agricultural production and processing in India, they lag well behind men in ownership of assets, access to agri-production resources and decision making. This paper explores the gender gap in access to agri-production resources and decision making in order to suggest strategies that can be useful in ensuring gender-equitable access to agri-production resources and decision making. A multistage, simple random sampling was used to select 80respondentscomprising 40 men and 40 women farmers from four villages covering two blocks of Khordha district in Odisha. The study reveals that men farmers predominate in accessing agri-production resources as compared with women. The chi square (p=0.0065) on difference between gender and access to agri-production resources affirms that it is strongly influenced by the gender. It is suggested that gender sensitisation, women education and land rights to women are to be prioritised in development initiatives to improve women's access to agri-production resources. There was wide variation in decision-making pattern among men and women related to crop and livestock production aspects. Six variables, namely, gender, education, land holding, gender of family head, family type, family size and access to production resources were significantly contributed towards variations in the decision-making pattern.

Impact of gender on small and medium-sized entities’ access to venture capital in South Africa

Background: The debate on the influence of gender on small and medium-sized entities’ (SMEs) access to finance from a demand-side perspective is still ongoing. This study seeks to contribute to the debate from an emerging economy (South Africa) perspective. Aim: The study investigated whether there is a gender gap in SME access to venture capital, a distinct source of finance. Setting: SMEs play a significant role in South Africa’s economy. Despite the importance of SMEs, access to finance is one of the major constraints affecting their success rate. Globally, to enhance the probability of SME survival, small business practitioners and governments are in search of relevant support measures. One of those measures could be adequate access to venture capital. However, it is sad to note that SMEs seldom use this distinct source of finance. Methods: The study made use of the quantitative method of research and is descriptive by design. Self-administered questionnaires were emailed to respondents for the purposes of gathering primary data. The t-test was used to statistically analyse primary data. Results: The results reveal that there is a statistically significant difference in the accessibility of venture capital between male- and female-owned SMEs. Conclusion: The article concludes that a gender gap in access to venture capital exists owing to differences in business approach between female entrepreneurs and their male counterparts. Female entrepreneurs are cautious about the level of risk they are willing to take and the amount of control they wish to exercise in firm ownership.

The gender gap in pensions in Latin America

AbstractLower female lifetime labour market participation rates, greater interruptions during their working lives, and wage gaps contribute to create gender gaps in pensions at the time of retirement. The design of social security systems may reinforce or attenuate these gaps. This article provides new evidence on gender gaps in access to pensions and in pension income in four Southern Cone countries in Latin America and analyses their evolution between 2000 and 2013, showing significant improvements in both gaps, with differential patterns by countries. The decrease in the gender gap in pension income has been particularly significant in Argentina and Brazil. In both cases, the largest increases in pension values during the period correspond to the lowest income percentiles, where women are overrepresented. The application of redistributive policies in these countries, aimed at reducing poverty and inequality but not necessarily focused on gender equity, has had positive and probably unintended consequences in terms of reduction in gender gaps in pensions.

Financial Inclusion and Welfare in South Africa: Is there a Gender Gap?

Arguments on whether there is a gender gap in access to finance remain inconclusive. The welfare benefits of access to finance have also not been confirmed. This paper investigates whether there is a statistically significant difference between the welfare of financially included men and women, and of financially included women and their excluded counterparts. Using a pooled dataset on financial access in South Africa, we find that women mainly use formal transactional products and informal financial mechanisms, while men mainly use formal credit, insurance, and savings products. Despite this pattern in the use of financial products, a quantile regression analysis shows that there is no statistically significant difference between the welfare of financially included men and women. There is a significant difference, however, between the welfare of financially included women and their excluded female counterparts. Women using non-formal credit and insurance products exhibit higher welfare in the lower end of the welfare distribution. An Oaxaca-Blinder type decomposition shows that welfare differences are mainly accounted for by race, education, income, and, marginally, marital status. Estimates of the average treatment effect suggest a causal relationship between financial inclusion and higher welfare. The mechanism is through the accumulation of durable items following use of formal financial services.

Can Climate Finance Contribute to Gender Equity in Developing Countries?

AbstractClimate finance helps mobilise additional development funds to help developing countries reduce CO2 emissions and local communities adapt to changing climate. Increasingly, however, concerns have been raised about the implications of climate finance on gender equity. Drawing on the ‘contextual‐procedural‐distributive’ equity framework, this paper conducts an extensive review of literature on forest sequestration, climate‐smart agriculture and disaster management. It indicates that the effectiveness of climate finance is constrained from a lack of awareness of the gender gap in access to land and capital. To maximise the impact of climate finance, it urges policy makers to tackle deeply rooted structural inequalities. © 2016 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Barking up the Wrong Tree? Measuring Gender Gaps in Firm’s Access to Finance

The literature on gender-based discrimination in credit markets is recently expanding, but the results are not yet definitive and have not been generally agreed upon. This paper exploits a new dataset on Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, which provides detailed information about female ownership and management in firms for investigating the existence of a gender gap in access to finance. The evidence presented herein suggests that more precise measures of the gender composition of the firm show that women-led businesses are more likely to be financially constrained than other comparable firms.

Tackling the Tech Gap: Chang Helping Women Access Technology [Women to Watch

Ann Mei Chang, senior advisor for women and technology in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues at the U.S. Department of State, serving as a Franklin fellow, has a big task on her hands. Her main focus is working on ways that technology can be leveraged to improve the lives of women and girls, particularly in the developing world. This includes three major areas: bridging the gender gap in access to technology, particularly mobile phones and the Internet in developing countries; finding effective ways to leverage technology solutions as a tool for social good and development, such as in health, education, agriculture, government, and entrepreneurship; and job and career opportunities for women in the technology sector.

Gender Gaps in Access to Health Care in Rural China

It has been established in the literature on intrahousehold inequality in low‐income economies that the family allocates more resources to male members, who have higher market values than women do. Using recent data collected on about 8,400 people in eight Chinese provinces, this article finds that, when other factors are controlled for, prime‐age women are favored in accessing health care in their childbearing and maternal periods. Women’s curative expenditures are more sensitive to family income, but men’s expenditures are more sensitive to parameters that are related to the time involved in getting treatment. This article interprets these findings as evidence for the family’s division of labor to solve its dynamic consumption‐production problem. However, consistent with the literature, this article finds that girls are less likely to get treatment than boys and that their curative expenditures are sensitive to parents’ education, family income and wealth, and village sanitary conditions.

The effects of age and family constraints on gender hiring discrimination: A field experiment in the French financial sector

Using correspondence testing, we investigate whether age and family constraints have an effect on the gender gap in access to job interviews. We sent job applications from three pairs of candidates to the same job advertisements in the French financial sector between January and March 2002, focusing on low-skilled administrative or commercial jobs and high-skilled administrative or commercial jobs. Within each pair, the applicants' characteristics were similar except for gender. We compare the gender gap in access to job interviews for single and childless applicants aged 25 and 37. We find significant hiring discrimination against women aged 25 applying for high-skilled administrative jobs. Young men are preferred to young women when employers offer long-term contracts. Among single and childless applicants aged 37, we find no significant hiring discrimination against women. We then compare the gender job-access gap for applicants aged 37 who are single and childless or married with three children. We do not find significant hiring discrimination against female applicants aged 37.

Constrained Geographical Mobility and Gendered Labor Market Outcomes Under Structural Adjustment: Evidence from Egypt

Summary We examine in this paper the evolution of gender gaps in labor market outcomes during structural adjustment and explore the extent to which widening gaps can be attributed to women’s more limited geographical mobility. Using comparable household surveys carried out in 1988 and 1998, we show that gender gaps in access to wage and salary employment and in earnings have widened during this period, especially in the nongovernmental sector. We attribute these changes, at least in part, to women’s more limited geographical mobility. We show that women’s commuting rates are not only much lower than those of men, but also have remained stagnant in a period where males were having to travel significantly more to obtain jobs outside the government.

Human Capital Development in Nigeria: A Socio-Economic Analysis

The paper establishes the link between education and selected human development indicators. Rapid socio-economic development has been observed to depend essentially on the calibre of human capital in a nation. Although Nigeria is one of the most populous nations in Africa, the country is still largely under-developed. This can be attributed partly to the unplanned efforts towards the development of human capital through education and training. Consequently the country has been scored low by the United Nations in terms of its human development indicators such as life expectancy, literacy and economic growth rates. The population growth has continued to expand, even beyond the rate of economic growth, a situation that gave rise to increasing poverty. Furthermore, gender gap in access to education continued to persist in the urban and rural areas, while dropout rates continue to worsen. Recommendation made to redress the situation include that human capital development should be planned and adequately funded in line with the needs of the economy and by applying international standards. Information about the labour market should improve while government policy should favour labour mobility. There should be regular interaction of planners, employers and builders of human capital to facilitate the process of meaningful national development. (Nigerian Journal of Clinical and Counselling Psychology: 2001 7 (1&2): 157-167)

Typology of Human Behavioural Traits for Strategic Customer Relations

The paper establishes the link between education and selected human development indicators. Rapid socio-economic development has been observed to depend essentially on the calibre of human capital in a nation. Although Nigeria is one of the most populous nations in Africa, the country is still largely under-developed. This can be attributed partly to the unplanned efforts towards the development of human capital through education and training. Consequently the country has been scored low by the United Nations in terms of its human development indicators such as life expectancy, literacy and economic growth rates. The population growth has continued to expand, even beyond the rate of economic growth, a situation that gave rise to increasing poverty. Furthermore, gender gap in access to education continued to persist in the urban and rural areas, while dropout rates continue to worsen. Recommendation made to redress the situation include that human capital development should be planned and adequately funded in line with the needs of the economy and by applying international standards. Information about the labour market should improve while government policy should favour labour mobility. There should be regular interaction of planners, employers and builders of human capital to facilitate the process of meaningful national development. (Nigerian Journal of Clinical and Counselling Psychology: 2001 7 (1&2): 126-133)

Risks and Opportunities in Gender Gaps to Access Shelter: A Platform for Intervention

In the context of the current global trends such as polarization of social groups and intensified poverty, there is a serious risk that gender gaps in access to shelter widen among the poor to the detriment of women's social, economic, and personal well-being. Paradoxically, these conditions also provide certain opportunities for women, including their greater community-based mobilization and leadership role. This paper examines these risks and the opportunities they bear upon and stresses the need for intervention in four areas of rights, access, security, and empowerment. The paper draws on a participatory research project carried out by the United Nations Gender and Habitat program in 1992 to 1999 in low-income settlements of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

Gender Inequality in Authority and Autonomy in the Workplace in Japan, Britain, and the United States*

Abstract This study examines gender inequality in the distribution of various aspects of autonomy and authority in the workplace in Japan, Britain, and the United States. In all three societies, there are clear gender gaps in access to autonomy and authority relations, but the distributions are most unequal in Japan. The main part of this study involves the testing of four hypotheses which attempt to explain gender differences in autonomy and authority. The first hypothesis, which focuses on family responsibilities, receives limited support from the Japanese and British data. Japanese and British women are disadvantaged in obtaining managerial positions and supervising other employees by the presence of children. The human capital explanation of gender inequality in the workplace appears to be supported to some extent in Japan and Britain because gender gaps are reduced when we controlled for Render differences in education, tenure and work experience in these countries. The differential access to managerial positions is an important source of gender inequality in workplace social relations in all three countries. Nonetheless, significant gender gaps remain. especially in the United States. When all these factors (family responsibilities, human capital and managerial positions) are taken together, gender gaps are reduced substantially in Japan. In contrast. persistent gender inequality is found in the United States.