Gender and financial access of SMEs in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This study examines gender and cultural differences in financial access of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in six countries within Southeast Asia (SEA): Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Malaysia. This study uses World Bank Enterprise Surveys dataset which covers 2015 and 2016 to investigate the gender gap in financial access of SMEs in SEA and compare the business performance of enterprises that are owned by males and females. The result shows that there is no significant difference between the financial access of female- and male-owned SMEs in SEA which means that there is no gender gap in financial access of SMEs. Nevertheless, the finding shows that there is a difference between the business performance of female- and male-owned SMEs. The business performance of female-owned SMEs in SEA are poorer than their counterparts. Moreover, as the culture may influence access to finance of SMEs across countries, hence, the researcher examines financial access of SMEs in different cultures, investigates the proportion of internal fund that is used by SMEs in their day-to-day operations and examines an impact of culture on the proportion of internal fund that is used by SMEs. The result indicates that there is no statistical significance between financial access of SMEs in non-Buddhist culture and no significant difference between the proportion of internal fund that is employed by the female- and male-owned enterprises in their daily operations. Nonetheless, the results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the proportion of internal fund that is used by SMEs across culture. SMEs in Buddhist culture are likely to use more proportion of internal fund to finance their day-to-day operations than SMEs in countries with non-Buddhist culture.