Regulatory Barriers to Women in Business

Abstract

Reducing gender inequality in the workplace is one of the most widely discussed global challenges. This paper inves-tigates empirically the impact of regulations on female participation in the private sector using panel data for a large sample of countries. The metrics examined include female ownership of businesses and female share of employment in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. The findings indicate that regulatory constraints tend to place a dispropor-tionate burden on women and shed new light on the interconnections between business regulations, firm creation, and women in the workforce.The views expressed by this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Na-tional Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The research was supported by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.