HOW DO WE MEASURE ENTREPRENEURSHIP FROM A GENDER ... · •Pilot project conducted in 2012 within the framework of the OECD Gender Initiative; •Objective: test the feasibility of

HOW DO WE MEASURE ENTREPRENEURSHIP FROM A

GENDER PERSPECTIVE? OVERVIEW OF CURRENT

APPROACHES AND EXISTING DATA SOURCES

EDGE Technical Meeting New York, 5-6 December 2013 Mario Piacentini, OECD Statistics Directorate

2

Objective: measure gender differences

in entrepreneurship

Identify smart indicators of

gender differences in

entrepreneurship

Find sustainable processes and methodologies to collect the

data

Start from a review of issues, options and existing data

Define the population of

interest

• Who is an entrepreneur?

– The founder of a start-up?

– A board member of a publicly listed company?

– The owner of a small, home-based business?

– An innovating manager?

• Little convergence on definitions among researchers

• The typical traits of ‘entrepreneurs’ – willingness to take risk, innovativeness, problem-solving – are difficult to observe and measure.

3

Defining the entrepreneurs

Definition of entrepreneur in the EIP

The OECD/Eurostat Entrepreneurship Programme (EIP) defines entrepreneurs as:

“Entrepreneurs are those persons (business owners) who seek to generate value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets.”

The entrepreneurs are business owners who:

1) Make an investment to put in place and manage an activity involving a degree of risk and uncertainty;

2) the outcome of their activity needs to be ‘novel’;

3) the innovation embodied in the activity needs to generate economic value.

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Ownership Management

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From a conceptual to an operational

definition: some open questions

• + : comparability; ‘casual’ businesses are excluded

• - : exclusion of a relevant population; possible gender bias

Minimum size: Only employer

enterprises?

• +: defining the gender of large corporations is problematic

• - : upper bound is difficult to define in practice

Maximum size: only

SMEs? Specific

legal forms?

??

Size thresholds for the business

Mode of acquisition of ownership

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Definition: Open questions

Only business founders?

• + : more homogeneous population

• - : possible to be entrepreneurial no matter the mode of acquisition

?

POPULATION-BASED DATA

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Advantages:

• high quality;

• timely;

• good international coverage.

Shortcomings:

• not all the self-employed are entrepreneurs;

• no information on the business other than its size and sector of activity;

• Comparability issues (treatment of incorporated self-employed).

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Self-employment data from labour force

or general household surveys

With current data

Number of employers and own

account workers

Characteristics and sector of activity of the self-employed

With a new entrepreneurship

module

Cleaner identification: distinguish free

professionals, current and discontinued owners

Entrepreneurial motivations, conditions at

start, business characteristics, etc.

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Use of self-employment data from

labour force or household surveys

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Brazil Canada Chile EU 27 Japan Korea Mexico UnitedStates

Australia Indonesia Russia

2000 2005 2010%

10

Basic indicator of participation: Share of

women employers

Share of employers (self-employed with employees) who are women, 2000-2010

The share of women among employers has only marginally grown over the last decade in most OECD and G20 countries

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Trends in ‘own-account’ and ‘employer’ series

Diverging trends for number of women own-account workers and employers during the crisis

2 250

2 300

2 350

2 400

2 450

2 500

7 100

7 200

7 300

7 400

7 500

7 600

7 700

7 800

Sel

f-em

ploy

ed p

erso

ns w

ith e

mpl

oyee

s (e

mpl

oyer

s)

Sel

f-em

ploy

ed p

erso

ns w

ithou

t em

ploy

ees

own-account workers employers

Women, EU27

2008 Q2

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Indicators on characteristics of self-employed

women and men

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Women Men%

Percentage of self-employed who completed tertiary education,2010

Self-employed women have higher educational attainment than men

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2010

13

Measuring profits from household surveys

• Gender gap ranges from

10 to over 60%

• Accounting for both

benefits and losses

• Measure is not fully

harmonized; available

only for the

unincorporated self-

employed; profits can

be difficult to estimate

for respondents

• Other measures: hourly

earnings? drawings vs.

profits

Gender gap in self-employment earnings

Source: Entrepreneurship at a Glance (2012)

Mixed entrepreneur-enterprise surveys

• use an existing household-level data collection as sampling frame;

• provide estimates of the size and economic performance of micro-businesses, registered or not;

• include modules on capital and intermediates, expenses and earnings;

• include detailed information on micro-entrepreneurs: reasons for starting, employment history, time spent on the business.

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Models for survey’s design and questions: mixed-

surveys of micro-business owners

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Surveys of micro-business owners and

informality

20

25

30

35

40

45

1992 1994 1996 1998 2002 2008

Informal Formal%

Percentage of small and micro-enterprises owned by women, Mexico

• The methodology allows to capture data on gender issues in the informal

sector.

• In the Mexican case (ENAMIN Survey), the share of female owners is

higher for non-registered than for registered enterprises

Source: Closing the Gender Gap: Act now (2012)

• ‘Unofficial’ surveys conducted by research consortia or research companies.

• Phone or face-to-face interviews of randomized individuals.

• The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is the best known example.

• Very rich information on attitudes towards entrepreneurship, risk tolerance, expectations, access and use of networks, etc.

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Models for survey’s questions: Surveys of

entrepreneurial attitudes and activities

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Measuring gender differences in

entrepreneurial attitudes

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Women Men

Self-assessed feasibility of self-employment, 2012

Survey question: ‘would it be feasible for you to become

self-employed within the next five years?’

Source; Flash Eurobarometer on Entrepreneurship, 2012

FIRM-LEVEL DATA

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Advantage:

• more suited than population surveys to the analysis of differences in the performance of firms owned and controlled by women and men.

Issues:

• Limited availability of comparable business surveys with information on owners;

• limited availability of linked business and population registers;

• very small businesses might not be covered.

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Use of firm-level data: advantages and

limitations

• Women-run enterprises are those enterprises where one or more women control the majority of shareholding and management.

• In practice, identification is easy only for the enterprises with a single owner

• When there is more than one owner

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Identifying ‘women-run’ enterprises

Define a robust set of survey questions on distribution of ownership/management

Integrate information on shareholding/declared revenues of owners in business registers

Surveys Administrative data

• Core Enterprise Survey questionnaire: - Female Participation in Ownership: ‘are any of the

owners female?’

• In the 2013 Manufacturing Module: - Percentage of female ownership: ‘What percentage of the firm is owned by females?‘

• Informal Surveys: – Gender of largest owner: ‘Is the largest owner (the

person most active in the operation of the firm) female?’

• African Indicator Surveys: – Gender of majority of the owners: ‘Are the majority of

the owners female?

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Questions to identify the gender of

firm’s owners in World Bank data

• Questionnaire asks for the gender and percentage of ownership for up to four owners

• A firm is classified as women-owned if one or more women own more than 50% of the business

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Definition in the U.S. Survey of

Business Owners

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

% change number all firms % change number employer firms % change employees

%

Women-owned enterprises Men-owned enterprises

Changes in number and employment of enterprises by gender of owner, 2002-07, United States

Source: Survey of Business Owners 2007

• Examples: SINE (France), Eurostat FOBS

• Why interesting?

– Homogeneous, policy-relevant population

– sample selected from business registers

– Possible longitudinal design

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Surveys on enterprises founders

0.50

0.55

0.60

0.65

0.70

0.75

0.80

0.85

0.90

0.95

1 year 2 years 3 years

France Other EU Other country

Survival of female-founders by place of birth, France

• Pilot project conducted in 2012 within the framework of the OECD Gender Initiative;

• Objective: test the feasibility of disaggregating EIP structural (size, industry) and demography (births, deaths, survival) indicators by gender;

• Coverage: 10 countries, only sole-proprietor enterprises.

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OECD experience on use of business

registers

Demography indicators from business registers by

gender

Source: Entrepreneurship at a Glance (2012)

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3-Year survival rates of sole-proprietor enterprises

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

0.55

0.6

0.65

0.7

Women owned Men owned

Demography indicators from business

registers by gender

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3-Year Employment growth rates

0.8

0.9

1.0

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6

Spain Netherlands SlovakRepublic

Finland Poland Switzerland Italy New Zealand France

Women Men

Source: Entrepreneurship at a Glance (2012)

Lessons learnt from this project

• It is still difficult for most OECD countries to link business registers with data on individuals.

• Extensive processing is often needed, and moving beyond single-owner businesses is demanding on data.

• Simpler indicators from administrative sources should be considered (e.g. business registrations by gender).

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TAKING STOCK AND MOVING FORWARD

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A step-wise process with some open

questions

Policy Question

• Participation gaps? • Performance gaps?

Population • All business owners? Only founders?

Available tools

• Use only existing data? New entrepreneurship module in population surveys?

Indicators

• Which indicators? • Which ‘headline’ indicators?

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Keep it realistic and sustainable

• Build as much as possible on existing data – Explore further the feasibility of using administrative

sources

– Expand existing surveys or use existing survey frames

• Evaluate response-burden and collection costs when considering different solutions – are detailed asset and expenditure modules

necessary?

– should demographic information on all owners be collected?

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Extra slides

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From questions to indicators

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Issue Indicators Source

Entrepreneurial

Participation Share of employers Labour Force Surveys

Registered businesses, by gender Administrative records

Entrepreneurial

Outcomes Gender gap in business earnings

Household surveys

Share of exported sales Business Survey/

Entrepreneurship module

Entrepreneurial

resources and

constraints

Share of external credit in start-up

finances

Business Survey/

Entrepreneurship module

Hours worked for the business, by

presence of children

Entrepreneurship module

Contextual indicators

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Access to finance

Work-family balance

Entrepreneurial and financial

education

Access to social security

Informality Senior

management