When Do Female-Owned Businesses Out-Survive Male-Owned Businesses? A Disaggregated Approach by Industry and Geography

Abstract

Studies have invoked several theoretical perspectives to explain differences between female-owned businesses and male-owned businesses. Yet, few have considered the possibility that differential outcomes between female-owned businesses and male-owned businesses vary from setting to setting, an insight that we derive by combining social constructionism with feminist theory. We articulate hypotheses regarding the outcome of business survival duration based on this insight. Then, using a dataset of one million Texan proprietorships, we test these hypotheses by estimating separate gender effects for many individual industries and geographic areas. We find that female-owned businesses consistently out-survive male-owned businesses in many industries and areas