Press Release

Thu 19th Mar 2009

Women entrepreneurs are driving growth through recession

Women entrepreneurs are growth oriented and positive about coping with the current economic downturn. These are the findings of a major research report and series of policy briefings commissioned by the National Policy Centre for Women's Enterprise (NPCWE) to be launched at the World Entrepreneurship Summit (WES) on the 20th March.

Nearly two thirds of men were worried about the current macroeconomic environment but the figure for women was just over a half. Similarly, nearly 50 per cent of male entrepreneurs were concerned about cashflow compared to fewer than 40 per cent of women.

"While this is a positive story in an otherwise gloomy outlook for the economy as a whole, the real challenge for policy is to address the issue as to why women's representation is so low amongst the growth-oriented entrepreneurial community," commented Rebecca Harding, managing director of the World Entrepreneur Society and of Delta Economics who wrote the research report.

The research suggests that where women entrepreneurs are growing their businesses they have invested as much as their male counterparts to start them up and produce similar growth in terms of turnover and employees. However, women are only half as likely to set up businesses in the first place, and by the time they are beyond the first two years and set on a growth path, just 13.6% of the sample of 1800 entrepreneurs were women. This does not mean that they fail, but for many never achieve their full growth potential.

The survey of 1800 growth-oriented entrepreneurs was conducted between 19th August and 10th October 2008 by Delta Economics and supported by the National Policy Centre for Women's Enterprise and HSBC. All those entrepreneurs interviewed had set up companies that had been running for more than two years but less than ten years and had turnovers of between £250,000 and £20m.

Views expressed by authors of the five policy reports:

• Although 16% of all UK companies are owned by women, just 3% of all corporate and public sector contracts are awarded to women-owned businesses
• Women are more likely to innovate when they set up their businesses than men
• Women are not discriminated against when it comes to access to finance but are still likely to be under-capitalised and to access less in the way of external finance than their male counterparts
• One fifth of women compared to one fifteenth of men enter self-employment from unemployment

The policy reports represent the views of the authors and not of the National Policy Centre for Women's Enterprise. However, the NPCWE will be examining the recommendations with a view to identifying the key ones for further discussions and influencing of government agencies and business support professionals. This will include the following areas:

1. That data collection and monitoring of women entrepreneurs, women owned businesses and women in the labour market is improved in order to allow proper evidence based policies to be developed.
2. That access to finance programmes, such as the recently launched ASPIRE fund and measures announced to counter the access-to-finance challenges of the current economic downturn are linked clearly to access to procurement in the public and the private sector.
3. That policy to address the inevitable increased unemployment and reduced employment amongst women during the recession incorporates self-employment as a potential route for women to take as a long term career choice.
4. That business advisers and business support professionals in the public and the private sector are made more aware of social enterprise as a suitable business model, especially for women, as a way of dealing with some of the social problems in communities that will arise from the current recession.

For more information please contact; Bernard Carey on 07769 887966 or email btcmarlinconsult@aol.com

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