<mark>Where shmim_shFaF_G G</mark> i i industry, country, year, and geographical zone averages minus firms’ own performance. ∈i i is ii<sup><mark>is a shift share of firms’ integration into GVCs c</mark>alculated using</sup> the error term. <mark>Different te</mark> sts are performed to assess the validity and the strength of the ii instruments.<sup>5</sup>

# **4. Empirical Results**

Our empirical analysis focuses on women’s participation measured by three variables: whether the owner is a female, whether the manager is a female and the share of females in the total number of workers. For each variable, we will run two different sets of regressions for two definitions of GVCs (GVC1 and GVC4): first, we run the regressions for all the regions (including the MENA region) as it is shown in Table 3a). Second, we run the same regressions but for the MENA region only (see Table 3b).

The extensions mentioned above are presented as follows: first, we show how GVC impact on women’s participation is moderated by gender provisions in trade agreements (in Table 4). Second, we examine how GVC impact is moderated by some internal factors that affect the investment climate (for all regions in Table 5); and for the MENA region in Table 6. Finally, we control for the endogeneity of GVCs using a PSM approach (Table 7) and an IV estimation method (Table 8).

# **4.1. Gender and GVCs**<sup>**6**</sup>

Table 3 presents our baseline regression. Regarding our control variables, larger, older firms, located in the main city and having a higher share of government ownership are more likely to be owned by females for all the regions (Table 3a) and the MENA region (Table 3b). Larger firms are generally better performing, listed and might have a diverse board. Li and Chen (2018), using a panel data from listed non-financial firms in China, find that gender diversity in the board has a positive impact on firm performance. Similar results are confirmed by Said et al. (2021) for Egyptian firms. As per the sector of operation, a higher share of government ownership increases the likelihood of female ownership. Generally, the public sector remains a larger employer of women than the private one. In addition, females also enjoy a higher wage premium in the public sector compared to those employed in the private sector.

As per our variable of interest, Tables 3a (overall) and 3b (MENA region) shows that the least restrictive definition of GVC is positively associated with a higher probability of having a women as the owner of the firm or with the share of female employees (especially production ones) whereas a deeper integration into GVC (GVC4) reduces the probability of female ownership. In addition, GVC integration exerts a negative impact on the likelihood of a women being the top manager of the firm (for GVC1) and an insignificant impact with the stricter definition (GVC4). Three remarks are worth mentioning. First, there are fundamental differences between female owner and manager given that an owner physically owns the business, while the manager is an employee of the business and works for the owner. In addition, the owner is more affected by

> 5 The minimum Eigenvalue is higher than all the critical values at 10% and the p-value is significant at 1%. Therefore, we reject the null-hypothesis according to which the instruments are weak.

> 6 Regressions for Non-Production Workers are presented in Table A3 (Appendix 4).

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