Impact of Gender in the Perception of Administrative Burdens among Young Entrepreneurs - Evidence from Slovakia

Anotace: Excessive bureaucracy, administration, and frequent legislative changes belong among the common factors that discourage people from entering the world of business. The main objective of this paper is to introduce scientific evidence that gender is one of the factors with a significant impact on the management of a company’s administrative activities and on the perception of such administrative burdens as bureaucracy and, often, tax and legislative changes as one of the barriers to young entrepreneurs in the Slovak business environment. On the basis of the research data that was obtained, we wish to confirm that gender has a statistically significant impact on the amount of time spent fulfilling the administrative and bureaucratic requirements among young entrepreneurs in Slovakia. We consider the findings of the research on administrative burdens to be important because of the assumption that excessive bureaucracy could have a negative impact on the competitiveness of every economy. The paper uses data from research carried out in Slovakia in cooperation with the Association of Young Entrepreneurs of Slovakia. Verification or rejection of alternative working hypothesis was realized through the statistical method of Pearson’s chi-square test. Our results bring the following findings: young men and women consider different areas of the bureaucracy to be excessive; female entrepreneurs spend more time watching the changes in legislation affecting the business environment, and females spend almost twice as much time on administrative activities related to business in comparison to their male counterparts. These findings are confirmed by the statistical evidence.