Written by: Laura Morínigo, Deputy Director of Partnerships & Gender for South America
In Latin America, women entrepreneurs face structural barriers that go beyond access to capital or technical training. One of the most persistent—and least visible—are gender norms that shape women’s perceptions, decisions, and opportunities, both for entrepreneurs themselves and across their value chains.
A growing body of research shows that business training programs often yield only moderate impacts on business performance (McKenzie & Woodruff, 2014), particularly when they fail to address the social constraints that influence decision-making—such as beliefs about women’s roles in work, the household, and the public sphere (Fletschner & Carter, 2008; Field et al., 2010; Ashraf et al., 2022).
Understanding how social norms affect women entrepreneurs
At Fundación Capital, we set out to better understand how gender social norms affect women’s entrepreneurship in Paraguay, and which types of strategies can contribute to sustainable change. We do so with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank through GDLab, McGill University, and GRADE, building on the methodological foundations of recent research conducted in Peru and Paraguay (Laszlo et al., 2025; Alcázar et al., 2025).
This research project seeks to answer three key questions:
- Who has the greatest influence on women entrepreneurs’ agency, self-efficacy, and confidence?
- How accurately are those beliefs perceived?
- Can an informational intervention improve perceptions, agency, and business outcomes?
Why does this matter?
Many women entrepreneurs face barriers that do not stem from a lack of skills, but from shared social beliefs that can constrain their autonomy and decision-making power. If these perceptions are inaccurate—as the evidence suggests—then correcting them could be a concrete step toward expanding agency, strengthening self-confidence, and improving business performance.
This research does not aim to impose change from the outside. Rather, it seeks to make visible what women already think and aspire to in their economic lives, and to open spaces where these beliefs can be shared, validated, and reinforced.
Continuing to share learning
In 2022, in collaboration with McGill University, we conducted the first behavioral study in Paraguay to understand how people form their individual and collective beliefs about social norms.
The study also explored how information, digital tools, and learning environments influence the ways people process these topics and reflect on them.
Access the full article in The University of Chicago Press Journal.
This study represents a pioneering contribution to the country’s academic literature and marks a starting point for future research in the region.
Our commitment is to continue sharing learnings, findings, and results so that this evidence can inform the design of public policies, more context-sensitive programs, and academic discussions on gender, development, and economics in Latin America.
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