Gender-Based Entrepreneurial Access to Bank Credit: Myth or Reality

Abstract

The availability of and access to capital is very important to the growth and sustainability of an economy. Extending credit to women entrepreneurs will help them to start and run their business, thus creating employment and contribute to increasing the wealth of a nation. The objective of the study is to get the views of Credit/Marketing officers of deposit banks on the issue of access to credit by male and female entrepreneurs in order to either affirm or debunk the myth that men have better access to loans than women. Data was gathered from the primary source through a structured questionnaire. The sample was selected using a stratified random sampling technique. The target respondents were Credit/Marketing officers with a minimum of 3 years of experience. Twenty were randomly selected from the 17 deposit banks. SPSS and Excel were used to analyze the data. 72.1% of the respondents were female. There are more loan applications from male entrepreneurs than from female, while governments are more disposed to funding men than women had one of the least means. There is no bank Credit product exclusive to men, whereas there are about 19 Credit products exclusive to women.