Gender discrimination on access to credit: comparison between Sweden and Italy.

Abstract

This research aims at finding the constraints that women face when they want to start an own activity, usually these are more than the ones faced by men. I will focus, especially, on the financial and economic difficulties. There is also a study on women as directors or members of the boardrooms. The most empirical part will focus on the comparison between two opposite European situations on this issue, Sweden (positive) and Italy (negative). Entrepreneurship is a tough environment. Reaching gender equality in the financial aspect is fundamental on the journey of guaranteeing empowerment and growth to women, one way to achieve this is increasing access to economic opportunity for a higher number of people. Women find difficulties on access to credit at the first stages of their business, but what is interesting are the reasons behind this problematic, in fact many aspects must be considered and with them, many consequences that affect the start of the activity. The businesses run by women use less external finance and draw it from less diversified sources than male businesses. Descriptive statistics highlight difficulties in accessing bank credit for female businesses: on the demand side, they resort to it less, anticipating a refusal more often; on the supply side, they have a higher probability of being refused a loan. Econometric analysis shows that these differences largely depend on characteristics - such as size, age or sector of activity - that make female enterprises structurally different from male ones, excluding a significant gender effect. (BCE n.176, 2013). The situation regarding this issue changes by countries, status of the economy of that country and government policies. The context that has been chosen for this research is the European one, more in depth it will be analyzed a comparison between two states that are in opposite situations regarding this issue, Italy and Sweden. The first country is a growing economy, and it is trying to increase policies to reach same opportunities between women and men on access to credit, while the second is a well-established economy and the equality between gender is almost reached in this sector. There is a vast potential for untapped entrepreneurial talent among women and banks and other financial institutions have an important role to play in helping these resources contribute to economic growth, while at the same time fostering the growth of their balance sheets. Women and business, there is still a lot to do to enhance female entrepreneurship. The world workforce is made up of more men than women, and female workers earn less than workers for the same job.