countries. A cross-country approach enables us to juxtapose contextual factors, such as sociocultural aspects, with gender disparities in access to finance. For example, gender gaps in bank account ownership, savings, and borrowing opportunities are larger in countries with gender-restrictive laws and regulations (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2013) and women’s access to credit is particularly difficult in countries with persistent cultural belief in traditional gender roles (Ongena and Popov, 2016). Legal barriers, such as inheritance laws, can also hinder women’s ability to access credit, given the salience of land as collateral for formal finance.<sup>3</sup> Our research systematically examines gender disparities in access to finance across a range of countries, focusing on both extensive and intensive margins. While our study is comparable to Ongena and Popov (2016), it differs in the measures of extensive and intensive margins and covers a larger number of countries from WBES. Furthermore, we build on this work by examining the underlying factors that contribute to observed disparities and illustrating that gender gaps in credit access can have broader implications for capital misallocation. We show that these gender-driven disparities in credit access and misallocation are more prominent in countries with traditional social and cultural norms, defined as "a society’s informal rules about appropriate or acceptable behavior" for women (Jayachandran, 2021). Specifically, we focus on norms that potentially constrain women’s economic choices and outcomes. Using data from the World Values Survey, we proxy these norms with measures of social perceptions about women’s roles at home and in the labor market. By classifying countries based on the restrictiveness of their social and cultural norms for women and merging this country classification with rich micro-data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) for 61 countries from 2008-2023, we find that: _First_ , female-managed formal firms sampled and surveyed by WBES do not face credit constraints on the extensive margin, measured by the likelihood of applying for credit or their credit application being rejected, conditional on applying. Our analysis suggests that female-managed firms are equally likely to apply for credit as their male counterparts. Moreover, female-managed firms have lower rates of credit rejection and a higher likelihood of opening credit lines. While there is no gender gap in the probability of applying for credit regardless of countries’ social and cultural norms, the results on favorable outcomes at the extensive margin for women-led firms compared to male-led firms are driven mainly by traditional countries. This may be the result of a stronger selection process, where only the most capable women in traditional countries become managers of formal firms.<sup>4</sup> _Second_ , female-managed firms are credit constrained on the intensive margin, measured by the value of loans received by firms conditional on credit application and approval. This disparity in the amount of credit received is not explained by gender differences in firms’ risk profiles, profitability, or productivity. Female-managed firms do have lower sales per worker, thereby suggesting higher frictions in accessing product and labor markets for productive workers. In traditional countries

> 3Evidence suggests that distortions affecting land markets further deepen capital market misallocation (Duranton et al., 2015a).

> 4Using the cross-country variation in the proxy measures of social and cultural norms, we classify countries as more and less traditional than the median country. See Section 2.2.

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