从差距到平等：在企业升级计划中缩小性别差距的战略目标

From Disparity to Equality Strategic Targeting to Close Gender Gapsin Business Upgrading Programs Stephen J. AndersonArti GroverShreya KankanhalliNandini Ramani Development EconomicsPrivate Markets GroupMarch 2026 A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11327 Abstract Business upgrading programs in developing economiesoften generate substantial gains for male entrepreneursbut limited average impacts for women, raising concernsabout both efficiency and equity. This study develops a Pro-gram Readiness Scorecard (PRS)—a transparent, scalabletool based on 10 observable factors capturing both entre-preneurial resources and capabilities—to identify thosemost likely to benefit from such programs. Using pooledexperimental data from firms in Uganda, South Africa, andMexico, this paper shows that without targeting, firms ledby men experience large and statistically significant gains,while those led by women have near zero average returns.Targeting that screens out entrepreneurs with the lowestscores on the PRS irrespective of gender improves women’s outcomes but leaves a significant gap. Applying a higherPRS threshold—specifically, restricting eligibility to womenin the top quartile of the PRS distribution—closes the gapentirely, as women with high scores achieve returns thatare statistically indistinguishable from men’s. These resultsare robust to multiple sensitivity checks. The findings havetwo broad policy implications. First, targeting based onthe PRS can strengthen program outcomes for women-ledfirms while also identifying the cohort in need of reme-dial support prior to joining high-value initiatives. Second,beyond gender-focused programs, the PRS can be appliedin a wider range of settings where scarce program resourcesmust be directed toward enterprises with the greatest poten-tial for sustained growth. 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 andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. FromDisparitytoEquality:StrategicTargetingtoCloseGenderGapsinBusinessUpgradingPrograms∗ StephenJ.Anderson†ArtiGrover‡ShreyaKankanhalli§NandiniRamani¶ Keywords:Firms, Entrepreneurship, Business Upgrading, Gender gaps, TargetingJEL Codes:D22, L25, L26, O25, J16 1Introduction Among the 214 million microenterprises that comprise 84% of all firms worldwide (Haideret al. 2019), those owned by men generate more revenue and are more profitable than thoseowned by women, even when operating within the same sector (Ashraf et al. 2025; Hardy andKagy 2018).1Recognizing the role of entrepreneurial ability in driving firm performance, gov-ernments and donors invest over$1 billion annually in business upgrading programs reaching4 million to 5 million entrepreneurs (McKenzie et al. 2021), often with an explicit focus onwomen (Ubfal 2024)2.These programs include (but are not limited to) training, consult-ing, coaching, and modernization programs.Multinational companies also invest heavilyin business upgrading programs to upskill their channel partners (e.g., retail entrepreneursand distributors): for instance, Unilever’s SAFAL program in India aims to equip 1.5 mil-lion entrepreneurs with business skills over the next decade, with a special focus on femaleentrepreneurs (Hindustan Unilever Limited 2024). Despite these large investments, rigorous causal evaluations of business upgrading pro-grams suggest a bleak pattern:on average, female entrepreneurs are unlikely to seeanyperformance return from these programs, even when men get positive returns in the sameprogram (e.g., Fiala 2018; Campos et al. 2025).We introduce the termgender programgapto describe the lower returns that female-led firms experience from business upgradingprograms compared to their male-led counterparts. In this paper, we make conceptual and empirical advances in understanding the gen-der program gap.First, we formalize the gender program gap in a conceptual frameworkadapted from Lucas Jr (1978), where female entrepreneurs face stricter credit constraintsand larger barriers to acquire entrepreneurial ability at baseline, prior to any intervention.A business upgrading program is modeled as an exogenous ability shock.Tighter creditconstraints prevent women from scaling capital to exploit the shock (constraint attenua-tion), while a lower baseline ability means