In recent years, support programs forwomen entrepreneurs have gained traction and prominence as ameans to create jobs and boost productivity at the nationaland regional levels. However, disparities in initialresource endowments of male and female-led firms, sectorsorting into low productivity activities, social norms, andinstitutional arrangements, constrain the growth offemale-led enterprises. This note reviews the outcomes ofprograms supporting female growth entrepreneurs and drawslessons from available evidence to inform the design of moreeffective programs. The review shows that most programs areprimarily geared toward microenterprises, making itdifficult to draw conclusions about program design forgrowth-oriented entrepreneurs, but some early findings pointthe way forward. Management practices appear to improve as aresult of business education, but there is little robustevidence to prove that support programs lead to significantimprovements in business performance outcomes. Furthermore,in programs with both male and female participants, firmperformance improves in some cases for male-led firms only,not for female-led firms. The note concludes by suggestingthe need for more experimentation in the design and deliveryof services and a new focus on strengthening the engenderingof support programs to more specifically addressgender-specific constraints such as social norms,entrepreneurial preferences, and institutional arrangements,changing public discourse, and paying more attention tofactors that induce female entrepreneurs to diversify intohigher value-added activities. Offering mentoring,networking, and other consulting services, in addition toeducation on basic business practices and strengtheningcritical areas such as gender-specific content, canpotentially increase the effectiveness of these programs.
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