The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Torres, Jesica
Other Authors: Maduko, Franklin, Gaddis, Isis, Beegle, Kathleen
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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245 0 0 |a The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses  |h Elektronische Ressource  |c Jesica Torres 
260 |a Washington, D.C  |b The World Bank  |c 2021 
300 |a 56 pages 
653 |a Firm Performance 
653 |a COVID-19 
653 |a Gender Gap 
653 |a Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises 
653 |a Private Sector Economics 
653 |a Health, Nutrition and Population 
653 |a Disease Control and Prevention 
653 |a Microenterprises 
653 |a Business Environment 
653 |a Female Entrepreneurs 
653 |a Entrepreneurship 
653 |a Coronavirus 
653 |a Pandemic Impact 
653 |a Private Sector Development 
653 |a Gender and Development 
653 |a Gender 
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700 1 |a Gaddis, Isis 
700 1 |a Beegle, Kathleen 
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520 |a The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories