Female entrepreneurship and social finance: a comparative study

Abstract

In the current global economic environment, institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the World Bank recognize the entrepreneurship of new businesses as a driver of unquestionable growth, and the financial mechanisms to put it into practice as determinants. The economic literature has long been studying the processes of entrepreneurship from different perspectives; although not so much considering the gender of the entrepreneur and the singularities of this circumstance, since there are situations that can lead to condition the start-up of business by women as less access to bank financing compared to their male counterparts, which may justify a lower entrepreneurial activity. In specific fields like social entrepreneurship, where the profit component fits with the social and environmental dimension of the project, this situation can be shown. This article focuses on the demand for financing by female entrepreneurs on three blocks of analysis. In the first block, the needs of financial resources of female entrepreneurs are studied in comparison with male entrepreneurs, in order to establish if there are relevant differences, contrasting whether the former need less funding than the latter when carrying out business initiatives. In the next block, the main financing sources declared by female entrepreneurs of 69 countries in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey are analyzed, identifying several relevant clusters with diverse results. The latter makes it possible, in the end, to contrast empirically the differences in the main sources expressed by men and women to finance their businesses.