Intervention (Hidden)
The treatment interventions target three potential constraints: 1) Women’s lower willingness to enter competitions, especially against men, 2) lack of confidence and business aspirations, and 3) practical constraints to participation such as unfamiliarity with business language or the filling out of forms. The intervention design utilizes recent evidence on entrepreneurship and willingness to compete, and addresses gender-specific constraints.
0. No intervention: One part of the sample received no intervention, and these respondents only participated in the entry and exit surveys that were conducted during the project delivery. They did not receive any information about the Business Plan Competition, and therefore function as a pure control group.
1. Core video: The core video is a 4-minute video delivering core factual information about the BPC. The content in the video is presented by one female and one male protagonist. The video explains that the goal of the BPC is to pick the most innovative business ideas, with the greatest potential to generate jobs for the youth emphasizing the competitive nature of the contest, providing details about the application and the transparent scoring system that will rank participants. An explanation of prizes to be won, training type and content is included in the core video. The video emphasizes the technical support and training, as well as the possibility to meet peers that will be offered to participants who pass the pre-screening.
Importantly, the core video does not mention the gender quota in the BPC. It also does not provide any inspirational content or explicit assistance on how to fill out the application form.
2. Quota video: The quota video is a 2-minute video segment that was combined with the 4-minute core video for delivery. The research team decided to show the core video to all treatment groups since we believe that the basic information about the BPC and the application process in the core video is necessary to encourage participation. The quota video makes salient the gender quota in the BPC by explaining that (1) half of all pre-selected applicants and winners must be women, and (2) that the BPC is a gender specific competition, that is, women will compete only against women and men will compete only against men. The video will thus emphasize that participants’ business ideas and plans will be competing against those developed by other participants of the same gender only, rather than those developed by anyone (i.e. male or female). The content in the video will be presented by one female and one male protagonist.
This intervention targets the potential constraint that women have a lower willingness to enter competitions, especially against men. The gender quota embedded in the design of the BPC implies that competition is within-gender. Highlighting this aspect may be particularly relevant, as recent research on this subject suggest that women do not avoid competition, they avoid competing against men. By definition, a BPC is a competition, and research shows that high-performing women fail to enter competitions they can win, due to gender differences in self-confidence and in preferences for performing in a competition (Niederle and Vesterlund 2007, 2011).
How to address this difficulty? Recent research suggests that women who know they are competing only against other women display more competitive behaviors than when knowing they are competing against men – they exhibit higher performance, higher confidence, and greater preference for performing in a competition (Burow et al. 2017; Datta Gupta et al. 2013, Paryavi et al. 2022). The findings suggest that women do not necessarily avoid competition; they instead avoid competing against men. Hence, highlighting the fact that there is a gender quota in the BPC may help overcome this barrier. Making the gender quota salient could thus increase women’s willingness to enter the BPC, increase their application probability, and improve the performance of the women who select into the BPC. The balance of evidence from laboratory experiments suggests that such affirmative action initiatives succeed at fostering competitive behavior among women (Balafoutas and Sutter, 2012; Niederle et al. 2013). The aim of this intervention was to test this hypothesis outside the lab, in the real world, in the context of the HDD BPC.
For male participants, compared to the control intervention, making the gender quota salient could possibly lead men to revise downward their expected probability of winning the BPC due to more intense competition among men with a quota, which could reduce men’s likelihood of applying. Note, however, that the men who are discouraged may be lower-performing than the additional women who enter thanks to the quota treatment.
3. Aspirational videos: Two versions of aspirational videos were produced, one with a female and one with a male role model. Both videos are 2.5-minute video segments with inspirational content aimed at boosting self-confidence and aspirations that will be combined with the 5-minute core video for delivery. Respondents received the video with the protagonist of their own gender. The video exposes participants to an entrepreneurial role model (a female for women, a male for men) to whom they can relate, who grew their businesses and created jobs for the youth through their own initiative, persistence, hard work, and innovation. The video presents entrepreneurial traits that are critical for success in the BPC. The video displays a same-gender role model who is close enough to the reality of the potential applicants to make them feel inspired but not hopeless as too far from their reach. The role model also shares some of the challenges encountered, which should be familiar and resonate with the audience, and ways the role model has overcome those. Last, the role model is culturally as close as possible to the target audience.
The two inspirational videos with a female role model and male role model are as comparable as possible: The script is the same, and the business sectors, filming locations and role model presentation are as similar as possible.
The inspirational video targets the potential constraint that women may lack confidence and business aspirations. The inspirational video focuses on encouraging respondents to believe in their ability to set ambitious business goals and to aspire to win, for both male and female participants. Showing a same-gendered role model may help especially women to break through stereotypical gender norms such as communal, caring and daring behavior. In line with the theory of positive psychology and with social role theory , women entrepreneurs are less likely to identify with the agentic entrepreneurial role, which is traditionally associated with men, and less likely to display confidence and willingness to risk. This leads to structural disadvantages for women entrepreneurs preventing female-owned business to succeed.
Inspiring entrepreneurs through role models may help not only with attracting more applicants into the BPC, but also to improve the quality of their business plans, chances of winning, and ability to effectively use the new knowledge acquired during the training (and potentially the grant) towards business expansion and job creation. This intervention is motivated by recent research showing the power of shaping people’s beliefs, hopes, confidence, and aspirations through role models and peers and through the use of positive psychology (Macours & Vakis, 2014; Beaman et al. 2012). For example, Bernard et al. (2015) designed an RCT to test efficiency of video-based interventions in rural Ethiopia. They tested documentaries of 15 minutes each of people with very similar backgrounds to the audience, that have improved their socio-economic status successfully, considered today as role models. Results have shown that documentaries do have an impact on the audience's aspirations.
4. Application assistance: For the application assistance intervention, the respondents first watched the core video and were then offered assistance for filling out the BPC application form. If the respondent accepted the offer, the enumerator helped the respondent sign up on the Agora Emprega application website, and then proceeded to fill out the short application form with the respondent. The enumerator also responded to any questions the respondent had about filling out the application.
The application assistance intervention addresses potential practical constraints to participation such as unfamiliarity with business language or the filling out of forms. The team hypothesized that this assistance reduces the mental and time costs of applying to the BPC, and hence increases the application probability. The mental and time costs of applying may be higher for female than for male respondents if female respondents are less used to filling out forms, and if they are less familiar with business language.