Effects of Gender on the Performance of Microenterprises in Pakistan

Abstract

In Pakistan, there has been a surge in women entrepreneurship, either as a sole proprietorship or joint partnership mostly with male family members. Using non-randomized data, in this paper we compare the impact of owner's gender on the performance of the enterprise in Pakistan. Our results show an intricate association between the gender of the owner and the performance of the enterprise. While there is no significant difference in the performance with respect to profitability of the business, however, female owned enterprises have shown more employment growth as compared to male owned enterprises. Results of OLS regression on the basis of gender show that common factors that affect the performance of the enterprises have assorted effects for male-owned and female-owned enterprises. For female entrepreneurs, education in the most significant factor in their business success.