The impact of Doing Business-style regulatory reforms on African women: A study on Ghanaian women entrepreneurs

The World Bank / International Finance Corporation’s (WB/IFC) annual report on Doing Business has been published since 2004. The overall conclusion concerning these reports is that they have had tremendous impact on putting the needs for private sector reform on the development agenda, not only for donors, but also for governments and politicians in developing countries. Regular collection of comparable data from 181 countries summarised in 10 indicators is of high value to understand the conditions for businesses worldwide.

A number of critical issues related to the Doing Business indicators have, however, been raised, including:

• Indicators reflect only the “costs” of doing business, but not any “benefits” which might be associated with the regulation or parameter measured.
• Gender issues are not captured in the present indicators. It was earlier considered to include a separate indicator for gender issues. However, now WB/IFC is working on mainstreaming these into all indicators.

So far there is no conclusive empirical evidence on the potential effects of Doing Business-style reforms on women entrepreneurs and employees.

The general objective of this project is therefore to generate empirical evidence of the actual effect of Doing Business-style regulatory reforms on women entrepreneurs and employees in Africa. Based on a case study on Ghana, the investigation will provide an informed basis on which to discuss possible adjustments and revisions to improve the gender relevance of Doing Business indicators.