Access to Capital and Women's Entrepreneurship

Overview & Synopsis

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature that evaluates the causal impact of interventions designed to enhance women's access to productive capital in low- and middle- income economies. The review identifies 27 studies that meet certain criteria, with wide geographic coverage. Overall, the evidence suggests that grants can spur entrepreneurship, but that such effects are mostly short-lived and not experienced by women operating subsistence businesses. For individual-liability loans, the evidence shows some positive impacts --- but only when credit products are designed to overcome flexibility needs and collateral constraints, and again often only for existing women entrepreneurs with higher baseline profits. The review also identifies an emerging research frontier, focused on the use of alternative data for credit scoring and the development of novel credit products facilitated by these data sources.