小企业绩效中的性别差距：来自秘鲁城市的证据

Policy Research Working Paper Gender Gaps in the Performance Evidence from Urban Peru Bledi CelikuDiego UbfalMartin Valdivia Economic Policy Global Department &Gender Group A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11218 Abstract This paper estimates the gender gap in the performance offirms in Peru using representative data on both formal andinformal firms. On average, informal female-led firms havelower sales, labor productivity, and profits compared to theirmale-led counterparts, with differences more pronouncedwhen controlling for observable determinants of firm per-formance. However, gender gaps are only significant at the include the higher likelihood of small, female-led firmsbeing home-based, which is linked to lower profits, andtheir concentration in less profitable sectors. The paperprovides suggestive evidence that household responsibil-ities play a key role in explaining the gender gap in firmperformance among informal firms. Therefore, policies This paper is a product of the he Economic Policy Global Department and the Gender Group. It is part of a larger effortby the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussionsaround the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. Theauthors may be contacted at bceliku@worldbank.org and dubfal@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility package for The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and Gender Gaps in the Performance of Small Firms: Bledi Celiku†DiegoUbfal Keywords:Gender gap, Firm performance, Entrepreneurship, Informal sector, formalsector, Peru. JEL codes: J16, L26, O17, D22, O54 1Introduction Self-employment accounts for a substantial share of total employment in developingcountries, with nearly half of all workers in low- and middle-income economies engagedin entrepreneurial activities.Informal firms, which operate outside legal and regulatoryframeworks,are especially prevalent in these contexts.These businesses are oftentrapped in low productivity and limited growth (Jayachandran,2021;La Porta & Shleifer, 2014; Schoar, 2010). Notably, women are disproportionately represented among Agrowing literature has identified multiple barriers that contribute to theunderperformance of female-led firms.These include constraints related to finance,business skills, access to networks, markets, and technology, and broader contextualfactors such as discrimination, restrictive laws and entrenched gender norms (Camposet al., 2019; Love et al., 2023; Siegrist, 2025; World Bank, 2021).While interventions Recent evidence increasingly points to gender norms and domestic responsibilitiesas critical constraint on women’s business growth (Bernhardt et al., 2019;Hardy &Kagy, 2018;Jayachandran, 2021).For example, Bernhardt et al. (2019) show thatcash grants given to female-led firms are often diverted to other household businesses,particularly when the husband runs a separate business.Their findings suggest thatgender norms may influence women to limit the growth of their businesses, possibly toavoid out-earning their husbands, as shown based on qualitative surveys in Ghana by that female business owners are significantly more likely to bring their children to work, This paper contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis ofthe gender gap in firm performance in Peru, using novel and representative data fromboth the 2022 Peruvian Informal Sector Enterprise Survey (ISES) for informal firms andthe 2023 Enterprise Survey (ES) for formal firms.While much of the existing researchfocuses exclusively on either formal or informal firms, this study examines both sectors Building on the approach of Firpo et al. (2009), we further estimate recenteredinfluence functions (RIF) to assess the adjusted gender gap at different quantiles ofthe performance distribution.This methodology enables us to study whether femaleentrepreneurs encounter more pronounced barriers at the bottom of the distribution –a Our findings indicate that, on average, female-led informal firms in Peru underperformrelative to male-led counterparts, with differences more pronounced for sales and profits.Decomposition of the raw gender gap at the mean shows that approximately two-thirds ofthis gap is explained by traditional observable char