covers mainly four areas: the existence of limited laws that stipulate equal remuneration, laws that hinder women from working similar night hours as men, laws that limit female participation in at least one industry or at certain jobs deemed as dangerous specially. Moreover, it shows that many countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh do not allow woman to get a job in the same place as a man. Thus, it is worth investigating how these barriers might reduce the positive impact of GVC on women’s participation.

Table 5 shows the impact of GVC, different obstacles and their interaction at the world level. Globally, institutional barriers limit female participation in the workforce. First, female owners are negatively affected by access to finance and by the inadequate educate labor force. Access to finance is of particular importance as World Bank (2021) shows that, although 115 out of 190 mapped economies do not prohibit discrimination in access to credit based on gender (needing husband’s approval or signature for financial transactions), female entrepreneurs can still face several discriminatory practices from banks and credit facilities (because of lack of collaterals due to the lack of resources for instance). As per the inadequate labor force, it also exerts a negative impact on female owners, pointing out the skills mismatch that characterizes several developing countries. Finally, it is worthy to note that in most of the cases the interaction of GVC with the obstacles is positive and statistically significant, which shows that GVC firms might face less obstacles (as, on average, they are more productive). Thus, the net effect of GVC on female ownership remains positive and statistically significant.

As per female managers, and in addition to inadequate labor force, political instability and corruption turn to be the most impending barriers, while the rest of the barriers are statistically insignificant. Such a finding has been documented in the literature, as women are perceived as more vulnerable and less likely to know and claim their rights. Thus, this will make them less confident in seeking legal redress and thus subject to abusive corruption. This is why, to empower women at the leadership level, more transparent and enforced rules are needed to have good governance. Access to finance and inadequate labor force are also exerting a negative impact on female employees. Finally, it is important to note that the GVC positive impact on female employees (and for production employees) is attenuated by most of the barriers as the interaction coefficient is negative with access to finance, electricity, and inadequate labor force (for GVC4 at the world level). Such a finding is of particular importance given that, as it was mentioned before, female production workers are abundant and hired intensively in several sectors where the emerging economies and have a comparative advantage. This is why, to increase the impact of GVC on this vulnerable category, it is crucial to improve the business environment. Thus, globally, improving skills to let them better match the labor market demand is a key issue to improve female labor force participation, management, and ownership.

Moving to the MENA region (Table 6), the picture looks slightly different as tax rates have a negative impact on female owners and female employees. There is strong evidence that tax policy has a gender bias (Stotsky, 1996 and AWID, 2013). Indeed, even if tax systems do not include explicit gender biases, there are several implicit biases in dealing with tax collectors, tax procedures, and fair implementation of rules. One of the important barriers that affects female managers and production employees in the competition coming from the informal sector. The latter is still a major problem in the region. Indeed, cheaper products offered by the informal sector may harm the performance of formally registered firms, and thus affect women’s employment, namely 18