2022 Research in the Capitol
Location
Iowa State House, Rotunda
Presentation Type
Open Access Poster Presentation
Keywords
Sex discrimination against women--Bahrain; Sex discrimination in economics--Bahrain; Businesswomen--Bahrain;
Abstract
Entrepreneurship is essential to virtually every economy; however, Bahraini women face many challenges accessing business development. In particular, a major constraint for these women is their access to capital support. In 2020, the government signed a law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in access to credit to help the issue; nonetheless, its effectiveness has yet to be systematically examined. Using data from several sources, I test whether the law significantly affected the gender gap in borrowing for business purposes while controlling for other variables. Importantly, I find that women’s labor force participation is a significant factor in reducing the borrowing gap between men and women and that the gender-based discrimination law is only relevant for states with low labor force participation. These results are robust across multiple regression models. Hence, a culture supporting women’s economic involvement is the foundation for their credit access, and work-based legislation should focus on women’s workforce participation.
Start Date
21-2-2022 11:30 AM
End Date
21-2-2022 1:30 PM
Event Host
University Honors Programs, Iowa Regent Universities
Faculty Advisor
Chris Larimer
Department
Department of Political Science
Copyright
©2022 Sandra Thiman
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Thiman, Sandra, "The Gender Bias Burden on Business: Women’s Access to Credit in Bahrain [poster]" (2022). Research in the Capitol. 5.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/rcapitol/2022/all/5
The Gender Bias Burden on Business: Women’s Access to Credit in Bahrain [poster]
Iowa State House, Rotunda
Entrepreneurship is essential to virtually every economy; however, Bahraini women face many challenges accessing business development. In particular, a major constraint for these women is their access to capital support. In 2020, the government signed a law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in access to credit to help the issue; nonetheless, its effectiveness has yet to be systematically examined. Using data from several sources, I test whether the law significantly affected the gender gap in borrowing for business purposes while controlling for other variables. Importantly, I find that women’s labor force participation is a significant factor in reducing the borrowing gap between men and women and that the gender-based discrimination law is only relevant for states with low labor force participation. These results are robust across multiple regression models. Hence, a culture supporting women’s economic involvement is the foundation for their credit access, and work-based legislation should focus on women’s workforce participation.
