Women and men also experience different confidence levels if they are responsible for the interests of others, as they would be as entrepreneurs, which leads to significant gaps in competition entry in a male domain (Paryavi, 2016). Therefore, beliefs about relative ability (i.e. confidence) can potentially be shaping female entrepreneurs’ decisions to compete in and pursue business activities that are not in traditionally female dominated settings.

# _(iii) Capital and assets_

Limited capital may affect women’s ability to make optimal business choices. Still, the gender differences in mere access to finance – having or not a loan or a bank account - appear to be modest. The fact that the microfinance industry has focused largely on making services available to women may have limited the extent of gender disparities in credit, at least among small firms. Aterido et al. (2011) find no evidence that women are disadvantaged in terms of access to capital when controlling for firm and entrepreneur characteristics. The Global Financial Inclusion Database (Demirguc-Kunt and Klapper, 2014) shows that 6 percent of women in Africa versus 7 percent of men had been granted a loan by a financial institution in the previous year, and 4 percent of women in the region versus 5 percent of men had received a loan from a private lender in the previous year. Moreover, the percentage of women receiving a loan from any informal source was similar to that of men, and the gender gap in receiving loans is smaller in Sub-Saharan Africa than in most other regions (DemirgucKunt and Klapper, 2014). In terms of savings, 33 percent of men and 25 percent of women in SubSaharan Africa had an account in a formal institution. In addition, 13 percent of men and 10 percent of women had mobile money accounts.

However, access is only one part of the story: the conditions under which loans are granted also matter. Getting loans of smaller amount, paying higher interest rates or receiving loans for a shorter amount of time may affect the female entrepreneurs’ ability to use these loans productively (Mayoux 1999; Demirguc-Kunt et al. 2008). Further research is needed to determine whether male and female entrepreneurs receive loans at the same cost and conditions.

When considering an individual’s ability to start a business, the amount saved is also important. In Malawi, 68 percent of men and 47 percent of women used personal savings for the initial investment in their business. Some women need capital from their spouse and that raises constraints on the type and size of their investment. Among all female entrepreneurs included in the survey in Malawi, 23 percent used their spouse’s savings to start their business, compared to only 2 percent of the surveyed men (Campos et al., 2015a).

These differences in asset ownership can significantly limit the strategic choices that women can make. The Gender, Land and Assets Surveys conducted in 2007-2012 in Uganda and South-Africa show that significant gender gaps exist in asset ownership. For instance, in Uganda, 30 percent of men surveyed owned transport-related assets compared to only 1 percent of women (Kes et al., 2011). In South Africa (Jacobs et al., 2011), men owned between six and 7.5 different types of assets on average, while women owned only four different types (solely or jointly).

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