The UK Female Entrepreneurship Index

Women have made great strides in entrepreneurship in recent years, with more female-fronted businesses than ever before, however, there is still a considerable gap between male and female founders in 2021.

From the number of women deciding to register their own business, to the industries and parts of the country that are seeing the most female entrepreneurs, we’ve looked at the data to understand what female entrepreneurship looks like in 2021.

Starting your own business is a big step and it isn’t for everyone, but is there a difference in the number of men and women who harbour ambitions of starting their own venture?

According to our survey, around one in five women have considered starting a business, which is lower than the number of men who said they have considered forming their own company (29%), but shows that there is still a considerable number of budding female entrepreneurs out there.

Have you ever considered starting your own business?

Male

Yes - 29% | No - 71%

Of the women we surveyed, one in five (20%) who said they had thought about running a business have taken the step to start their own business.

So why is there such a difference? There are many factors that can put women off starting their own business and there are many barriers in place. To find out, we asked our sample of women what their biggest concerns were about starting a business.

Female

Yes - 18% | No - 82%

Of those who have thought about starting their own business but haven’t yet taken the plunge, the most common reason why not is a savings or financial concerns, while the second most common reason for women not starting a business is the risk involved.

What would prevent you from starting your own business?

Here at Tide, we help thousands of people to get set up with business current accounts, and are dedicated to encouraging and supporting women in starting out in business.

Tide has committed to supporting 50,000 women in starting their business by the end of 2022.

The number of self-employed women has undoubtedly increased a lot, even just over the last five or ten years.

Looking way back to 1984 (when the earliest data is available), there were 646,000 women in self-employment in the UK. Fast forward to 2020 and that number has more than doubled to 1.6 million (for context, the UK population grew by 18% between 1984 and 2019).

Over the same period, the number of self-employed men in the country has increased by 47%, from 2.05 million to 3.02 million, so while the gap is certainly closing, there are still just under twice as many self-employed men as women.

How has the number of women in business changed

KEY Self-employed male Self-employed female

Women made up the greatest proportion of the self-employed population in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland region, with 39% of self-employed people being women, followed by the North of Tyne region, which includes Newcastle upon Tyne, and the West of England, which includes Bristol (both 34.7%), however, each of these areas is still some way off achieving 50-50 parity when it comes to women starting their own businesses.

On the other hand, the West Midlands has the lowest rate of female self-employment (27.2%), followed by Swansea Bay (28.9%) and Greater Manchester and the Tees Valley (both 29.4%).

These differences are a result of a number of different factors, such as the dominant industries in a city, the availability of high-skilled jobs, and whether not self-employed women have access to another source of income.

The UK’s female-founder hotspots

Rank	City region	Self-employed male	Self-employed female	Percentage of self-employed who are female

Looking at how self-employment amongst females breaks down between industries, there are some stark differences.

At one end of the spectrum, just under three-quarters (74%) of those who are self-employed in health and social work are female.

This was followed by industries such as ‘households as employers’, which encompasses cleaners, babysitters and secretaries (69%) and other service activities, such as hairdressers and beauticians (66.8%).

Industries such as construction (3.9%), transport and storage (6.9%) and mining and quarry (9.1%), however, have very small numbers of self-employed women, instead being dominated by men.

The UK’s industries with the most female-founders

Rank	Industry	Self-employed male	Self-employed female	0% 50% 100%	Percentage of self-employed who are female

We’ve also taken a look at some of the biggest businesses in the world to see how those with female CEOs compare to those run by men in terms of revenue, profit and overall market value.

Of Fortune’s Global 500 ranking just 14 (2.8%) of the 500 companies have female CEOs, which in itself is an indictment of how difficult it is for women to rise to the top of these huge organisations. But how do these 14 female-run businesses fare against those with male CEOs?

Male CEOs

Female CEOs

Starting with revenue, female-fronted businesses lagged behind by $7.48 billion on average, although the revenues of these businesses actually increased at a greater rate than those without female CEOs, suggesting that female-run businesses are growing at a quicker rate than those run by men, demonstrating why it’s so important to encourage more women to start their own businesses, as they can clearly be just as successful, if not moreso.

It’s a similar case when it comes to profits, although here, the gap is much smaller, with female-run companies turning an average profit of $4 billion, compared to $4.125 million for those with male CEOs.

However, in terms of assets, there was also clearly a big gender gap, with male-owned companies holding assets of over 140% more than those with female CEOs.

The most successful of these female-run businesses is General Motors, run by Mary Barra, with annual revenues of $137 billion, while the highest-ranking UK-based business run by a woman is Aviva ($89.6 billion).

Methodology

How many women have considered starting a business?

The number of male and female Tide KYC approved members approved since November 2016.

How has the number of women in business changed?

The number of self-employed women each year since 1984 up to 2020, sourced from the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey.

Where are the UK’s female-founder hotspots?

The number of self-employed women in each ‘city region’ in 2019 according to the Office for National Statistics’ Self-employment in city regions dataset.

Which industries have the most female founders?

The number of self-employed women in each industry in 2019 according to the Office for National Statistics’ Self-employment in the UK and its characteristics dataset.

How do female-run businesses perform against male-run counterparts?

We looked at all 500 companies on Fortune’s Global 500 ranking and took the average revenue, profit (and annual growth for both of these) and assets, for companies that have a female CEO and compared these against the averages for those companies with just male CEOs.

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The UK Female

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