they also free up time that female entrepreneurs can devote to making their businesses more profitable more analysis is needed to better understand why women are less inclined to use external finance and whether they are discouraged by discriminatory treatment in the capital markets it is often argued that women have more trouble accessing credit than men indeed the evidence shows that relatively more male than female entrepreneurs make use of bank loans with or without collateral to start their enterprises figure although there are important differences in the demand for loans across countries