A new survey from financial platform Tide has shown the growth of female self-employment in the UK over recent decades, but also highlighted remaining gaps between the female self-employed workforce and their male counterparts.
According to Tide’s research, 18 per cent of women have considered starting their own business, significantly under the 29 per cent of men who said they had considered it. Of that 18 per cent of women, just 20 per cent had taken steps towards starting their own business.
Tide’s research looked into the reasons behind why more than 80 per cent of female respondents said they wouldn’t consider starting their own business, with the most common reason (cited by 35 per cent) being not having enough finances or savings.
This was followed by the risks being perceived as too high (24 per cent), already running their own business (20 per cent) and a lack of confidence (15 per cent), while 6 per cent cited “other” reasons.
However, the research also highlighted the strong growth in the UK’s female self-employed sector, showing that the female self-employed workforce has grown quicker than its male equivalent since 1984. From 1984 to 2020, the number of self-employed women in the UK more than doubled from 646,000 to 1.6 million.
While men still constitute the majority of self-employed workers in the UK, the rate of growth for self-employed males was considerably lower, with a 47 per cent increase from 2.05 million in 1984 to 3.02 million in 2020.
Discussing the findings, Tide’s Chief Administrative Officer Liza Haskell said: “Our research reveals that the number of self-employed women has increased by 148 per cent since 1984, with over 1.6 million women in self-employment in the UK today. It’s great to see how women have made huge strides in entrepreneurship in recent years, with more female-fronted businesses than ever before.”
