Gender, Enterprise Ownership, and Labor Allocation in MENA

The project aims to analyze the pattern of enterprise ownership and labor allocation in the MENA region, in comparison with the rest of the world. In the first paper, the impact of country characteristics on the probability of ownership of firms of different sizes among men and women is studied. The second paper focuses on the effects of government policies and the business environment on firm operations, while taking into account the ways in which this effect may vary depending on the characteristics of each firm. The papers assess whether regulatory policies, the administrative process, and the court system have been applied differently and whether their impact has varied based on the gender of the firm owner. In particular, the project intends to discover if the institutional and policy environments have constrained female-owned SMEs in MENA.