The Moroccan MSMEs Observatory has conducted an innovative study on female entrepreneurship and women business leaders in Morocco and announces the first results on the occasion of the International Women's Day.
The study proposed by the Observatory is innovative as it is based on:
- The census of the quasi-exhaustiveness of formal enterprises in Morocco:
While all the studies carried out on the subject are based on samples, this production of the Observatory is carried out on an exhaustive database, making it a first in Morocco. The database used includes 567 041 active legal and natural enterprises, in addition to 49 160 active auto-entrepreneurs.
- The application of a data science-based method for predicting the gender of the company leader, based on his or her first name:
In order to overcome the obstacle of unavailability of gender data in the databases of Moroccan administrations and public institutions, the Observatory used the first names of the Business leaders and entrepreneurs informed in the databases received from the partners (Moroccan Office of Industrial and Commercial Property and Directorate General of Taxes).
The Observatory has developed and applied algorithms for the prediction of gender from a dictionary of first names of Arabic origin, while at the same time processing manually the ones that were not identified by the algorithm.
• Definitions used :
Within the framework of the study, the Observatory has chosen a definition for women entrepreneurs in line with the international organizations and the specificities of Moroccan databases and the related constraints. This definition is as follows:
- For legal entities: a woman who leads the enterprise, even if she is not the main owner.
- For natural persons: A woman entrepreneur is the owner of the enterprise.
• First results :
The study highlighted the following key findings:
- 16.2% of business leaders (active Natural persons, active Legal Entities and Auto-entrepreneurs) in Morocco are women. This percentage breaks down as follows:
• 14,6% of Active Legal Entities are led by women.
• 16,3% of Active Natural Persons are led by women.
• 25,5% of Active auto-entrepreneurs are women.
According to the World Bank, the share of women business leaders and entrepreneurs in Morocco is 16.1% in 2019, which is lower than the global average (43.2% in 2019) and the average for sub-Saharan Africa (56%). It should be noted, however, that these figures are based on surveys conducted on a limited sample and probably include the informal sector.
The Observatory’s complete study on female entrepreneurship and women business leaders in Morocco will be published soon, featuring more indicators, including the distribution of women business owners across sectors, company sizes, legal forms, and regions, as well as the share of employment in businesses led by women.
