| Resumen: |
Recently collected data on informal or unregistered firms in Argentina and Peru show significant differences between male- and female-owned firms. Compared with male-owned firms, female-owned firms are smaller in size, have lower labor productivity and are less likely to use equipment such as machinery and vehicles. Some of the commonly held perceptions, such as lower education among women entrepreneurs, fewer numbers of owners among firms that have a female as the largest shareholder and greater difficulty faced by women in accessing credit, are only weakly supported in the data. However, as documented in the literature, women managers have fewer years of experience in running a business and they are also more likely to operate from inside than outside the household premises in order to take advantage of better working hours and location. Some gender-based differences in the willingness to register and the potential costs of registering are also observed in the data. |
