Persistent yet ameliorable shocks to female entrepreneurship: Experimental evidence from Kenya

成果类型:
Article
署名作者:
Campos, Francisco; Hernandez-de-Benito, Maria; Jamison, Julian C.; Safir, Abla; Zia, Bilal
署名单位:
The World Bank; CUNEF Universidad; University of Exeter
刊物名称:
JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
ISSN/ISSBN:
0304-3878
DOI:
10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103546
发表日期:
2025
关键词:
摘要:
While female entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles, it is unclear whether gender gaps worsen during economic crises: women, especially married women, may be more affected than men due to these obstacles, but could also be less exposed due to their specialized sectors, or if a crisis flattens everyone together. Leveraging on a unique timing of collecting baseline data just before COVID-19, we examine the impact of randomized grants and business training of partnered female and male microentrepreneurs two years after the crisis. We find that women were more severely impacted by the pandemic, but that the grants significantly helped mitigate the crisis impacts on business ownership, sales, profits, income, and well-being. In terms of channels of impact, the grants increased women's labor supply, at the expense of domestic work, leisure time, and childcare hours, while, for men, time is reallocated from wage employment to their business.