Let's Celebrate Female Entrepreneurs Today

Having started my own business to have the flexibility to earn while looking after my daughters, I’d like to celebrate female entrepreneurs today on International Women’s Day.

I was surprised to learn that women are only responsible for incorporating 20% of all companies in 2022.

While this is more than double the number since 2018 I still think the number is quite low given the huge benefits that being ones’ own boss affords. And with the rise of the creator economy, women can easily build their own creator businesses and achieve the freedom and control that being ones’ own boss affords.

Most businesses don’t need access to capital to get going. So the much talked about lack of access to funding among female owned businesses, is not a barrier to entrepreneurship for many women. It’s just a barrier to those starting certain types of business.

Even for them, I gather there are plans afoot to roll out Female Founder Growth Boards across the regions of England. This is an idea in the final report of ”Women-Led High-Growth Enterprise Taskforce”.  So, hopefully, the barriers preventing high growth potential businesses from accessing funding will gradually break down.

The fact is that the flexibility to be there for your children in a way that employment doesn’t allow, so you can work around them, and be there if they get ill or if you want to pick them up from school or to attend sports days, is the reason I chose entrepreneurship over a job. 

And I know that women make great entrepreneurs. You just need to watch programs like the Apprentice, where the all-female groups outshine the all-male groups virtually every time, to know that female entrepreneurs are more than equal to men. Investors who have an ingrained prejudice against women entrepreneurs are clearly missing out. 

I suspect there are a lot more women in business then the 20% incorporating new companies indicates.  Searching for answers, I noticed a recent UK business report that indicated that, in 2021, 80% of SMEs were defined as family-owned businesses – up from 77% in 2020.

Of the smaller enterprises, 82% of micro-businesses were considered family-owned, along with 69% of small businesses and 57% of medium-sized companies. 

It’s possible that many, if not most of these family-owned businesses are husband and wife teams.

My hunch is that the vast majority of women work in businesses they own, either on their own or with their partners.

It figures because once us women have children we gravitate towards working for ourselves.

I’d love to see figures that break down the number of women in business (whether on their own or with their partners) as opposed to women working in corporate environments. 

Although Covid might skew the figures now that working from home is an option in many jobs, before Covid, I doubt women would have opted for employment over self-employment if they could help it.

This is why we shouldn’t just look at the number of women incorporating their own companies as an indicator of the number of women running businesses that they own. It’s likely the figures are much higher.

As a mother to two daughters of child bearing age, I care deeply about the success of women entrepreneurs. I’m thrilled that Covid has given them  the opportunity to work from home – something that was previously the preserve of entrepreneurs. 

However, I suspect that they would get greater autonomy and control over their own lives through entrepreneurship. Hence why I want to celebrate female entrepreneurship today.