Analysis on Women’s Economic Empowerment and Productivity

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2015-02-04 01:12:24, 回應(0), 人氣(1459)

Analysis on Women’s Economic Empowerment and Productivity

Dr. Chao Yuang Shiang

Assistant professor in Dep, of finance, Nan Hua university.

The observed disparity between the sexes in productivity and earnings is persistent and pervasive. The value added per worker is between 6 percent and 35 percent lower in female owned than in male-owned firms; female-managed farms are 20 percent to 80 percent less productive than male-managed farms; in the workplace, females earn between 20 percent and 80 percent lower average wages than do males, depending on the country (World Bank 2012). This disparity is not because women are inferior entrepreneurs, farmers or wage workers; it is primarily the result of differences in the size of their businesses and farms, in the sectors in which they operate, and in human capital (health and education) and returns to this capital (World Bank 2012, 2013). A wide range of policies and programs—from strengthening economic rights for women under the law to providing women with greater access to quality child care and financial literacy—can potentially spur women’s economic advancement and reduce gender gaps in economic performance.

I review the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of actions that have direct, near-term impacts on women’s economic outcomes while recognizing the importance of complementary investments in women’s human capital and inclusive policies and legal frameworks over the long term. Short-term interventions that succeed in increasing women’s earnings are not to be underestimated. They benefit women and can have a transformative impact on society by fostering greater investments in child well-being, reduced household poverty, and enhanced aspirations for the next generation of girls and women (World Bank 2012).

Access to Capital: Loans and Grants Poor and Very Poor Women. The experimental evidence (table 1) overall shows that a small infusion of capital alone, as a loan or a grant, is not enough to grow subsistence-level, female owned firms. Poor women who run subsistence-level enterprises (with average monthly revenues of US $80 to $100 at market exchange rates, profits of approximately $1 per day, and no paid employees) fail to benefit in terms of business profits or growth from micro loans or cash grants (of approximately $100 to $200 on average). This result was observed in Sri Lanka, where cash 4 grants were given (de Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff 2008, 2009, 2012), and in India, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand, where the intervention was microloans (Duflo et al. 2013; Augsburg et al. 2012; Attanasio et al. 2011; Karlan and Zinman 2010; Coleman 2006). In contrast, capital alone increased the business profits of male-owned microenterprises in both the Philippines and Sri Lanka – an effect that, in the case of Sri Lanka, was still evident five years after the cash was disbursed (Karlan and Appel 2011; de Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff 2012). The finding that micro loans or grants have a positive effect on the performance of maleowned firms, but not female-owned firms, may be because subsistence-level female firms operate in sectors that face more severe constraints to growth and because women face more pressures than men to spend some of the cash intended for the business for other purposes, or a combination of both.

Non-Poor Women. Access to finance may be enough to increase the growth and earnings of women-owned small firms in the larger, formal small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment (with 5 to 19 employees per firm), although rigorous evidence on the impact of access to financial services for SMEs by the firm owner’s sex is still lacking (partly because of the comparatively few women-owned SMEs compared with women-owned microenterprises). However, there is sufficient evidence that in developing economies, capital constraints are one of the main reasons for the suboptimal size of female-owned firms compared with male-owned ones (Klapper and Parker 2011; Sabarwal and Terrell 2008) and, more generally, are a binding constraint to the growth of all small firms in developing countries, both female- and male-owned firms (Ayyagari, Demirguc-Kunt, and Maksimovic 2012).

PS: This paper is just for references.