Over the Gender Gap: Female Entrepreneurs in Taiwan

Female-owned businesses already represent a powerful economic force worldwide despite the entry and growth constraints they face. This research investigates the gender gap of female entrepreneurs by analyzing the trend in the number of female-owned enterprises in Taiwan, utilizing official data of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan. We compare the number of male-owned businesses and female-owned businesses during 2007-2014 and use panel data regression to compare the performance of women- and men-owned firms. The empirical results reveal the following findings. First, the number of female-owned enterprises is significantly lower than the number of male-owned enterprises. Second, the higher the proportion is of total employment in manufacturing and service industries, the lower is the proportion of female enterprises. Third, when the labor participation rate in each administration is higher, the proportion of female-owned enterprises is lower. Fourth, a higher unemployment rate denotes a higher proportion of women's enterprises. These empirical findings indicate that gender gaps among entrepreneurs are still huge and resilient across many dimensions, including firm size, productivity, exports, financial capital, etc. Therefore, gender equality still needs to show advancement among SME owners in Taiwan.