Female Entrepreneurship and Professional Networks

Female-owned businesses continue to be smaller and less profitable than male-owned firms. We conduct an RCT in Ghana on a sample of 1,771 growth-oriented female entrepreneurs to investigate the effect of online networking groups on firm performance. We find that access to online networking opportunities leads to greater innovation, better business practices and higher profits by 21%. The increase in profits is concentrated in the upper tail of the distribution. The treatment shifts business collaborations from friends and family members to business network members in the intervention. We find the largest effects for those in groups with more-educated, higher-quality, and more diverse entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal that a low-cost, light-touch online intervention that increases networking opportunities can effectively improve outcomes of female-owned fir