Soft Skills and Occupational Choices Among Female Microentrepreneurs

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The research conducted under this Technical Cooperation (TC) will generate relevant knowledge that will be useful to improve women's empowerment, labor market outcomes, and their income-generating capacity in Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, this TC will look at the effect of providing training on soft-skills on the occupational choices and income of female microentrepreneurs.The evidence shows that business trainings on entrepreneurial hard-skills have little impact on business growth and productivity. The project proposed will answer two urgent policy questions: (i) are soft skills for microentrepreneurs good and/or necessary complements to the hard-skills that business trainings have traditionally provided?; (ii) are microenterprises failing to grow because they do not want to grow? Would some microentrepreneurs insert into labor markets once provided with the right set of soft-skills to get and keep a job? Would they fare better than those that are not offered such opportunity?The objectives and activities included in this TC are closely linked to two of the region's development challenges (Social exclusion and inequality and Low productivity and innovation) as well as with one cross-cutting issue (Gender equality and diversity) included in the Bank's Institutional Strategy. This TC is also well aligned with the Sector Framework Document of Social Protection and Poverty and the Strategy on Social Policy for Equity and Productivity. This project is particularly relevant for the Bank's efforts to monitor women's empowerment in the region, which is an indicator of intermediate results in the IDB Corporate Results Framework. The knowledge generated under this TC will also contribute to the development of future Bank's operations that aim at supporting Latin American and Caribbean governments in their initiatives to promote micro and small enterprises growth and productivity enhancements in the sector.