About This Project

Research shows that while there are many female-led enterprises in Africa, there is an extensive gender gap among small and medium enterprises.

We, two Master students from Sweden and Germany, aim to find differences in leadership and organisation between female- and male- led businesses and identify best practices to help improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Through our preliminary research we have found that female-led businesses make up to half of micro businesses in developing countries and are an important factor in combating poverty for individuals and families. (UN, 2013) However, they are less likely to grow from micro-businesses to SME’s compared to their male counterparts and therefore have little impact on the economic growth of the country. (Minniti, 2009; Cliff, 1989)

We assume that there are either internal differences (e.g. how the business is run, the vision for the business, the skill set of the entrepreneur) or external differences (e.g. cultural, social, financial) that hinder women from growing their businesses.

What is the significance of this project?

The purpose of this thesis is to identify differences in business models, leadership style and/or consumer perception amongst female- and male-led social businesses and identify best practices to help the companies we collaborate with to improve their efficiency and social impact.

We aim to contribute to the limited research on female-led enterprises (both micro business and SME’s) in developing countries as we found that so far the majority of existing research focuses on the micro-enterprise level in developing countries or social SME's in developed countries.

What are the goals of the project?

We aim to send out a survey and conduct in-depth interviews in addition to secondary research in order to answer our research question. We are in contact with several companies, entrepreneurship hubs and social consultancies that will give us access to multiple social enterprises in Africa and make it possible to receive data that is valuable and significant. The goal is to identify internal or external factors contributing to the low number of female-led businesses among SME's and identify best practices among the companies that have managed to grow in order to help other social micro-enterprises to do the same.