Gender and Small Business Growth Orientations: Theory, Evidence and Implications for Ghana’s Small Business Sector

Abstract

This paper contributes to addressing questions about why differences in business growth between men and women businesses exist. The paper employs key and informant interviews, literature reviews and survey of about 4000 heads of rural small businesses in gathering data. The result indicates that while both genders face limited access to productive resources, the men’s accessibility to such resources is generally better. It also observed that while several factors may influence the growth orientations of the genders, differences between them is not that much and that the most important factors influencing growth orientation is arguably the motivation to start a business. This was evident by the fact that while men were more likely to concentrate on growth orientation factors in establishing their businesses, women were more likely to think of survival (needs related factors) in setting up businesses. This suggests that although men may have better access to productive resources as opposed to their women counterparts, growth orientations of both genders is different. This suggests that policies aimed at targeting a particular set of people to grow their businesses and others to establish businesses for purposes of survival will have a higher rate of success than a ‘one sixe fit all’ policy. This results contribute knowledge to the development of evidenced base policies theories on small business success. The use of new data from the filed spells out the originality feature of the study. It is concluded that using the metric of growth alone to justify the (in) efficiency and growth of men and women headed businesses.