Female run small businesses grow 18% in the last five years

More women than ever are running their own small business, according to recent research from Simply Business.

• Empowering Women in Business initiative
• How to go self-employed in the UK
• A guide to starting a business from home
• The self-employed guide to Self Assessment tax returns
• Why do I need business insurance?

Analysis of over 500,000 small businesses shows that while there are still a greater number of small businesses owned by men, female small business owners are rising at a significantly faster rate.

The amount of women taking out business insurance policies increased the most within home baking, takeaway food and courier businesses.

Supporting new businesses

We’re proud to support small and female-owned businesses across the UK, from a children’s author and greetings card entrepreneur to our Business Boost grant winner who makes sustainable baby wraps.

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29% of small businesses owned by women

Female-owned small businesses rose by 18 per cent since 2017, compared to 14 per cent growth in male-owned small businesses for the same period. What’s more, our data shows that female-owned small businesses now account for 29 per cent of all the small businesses in the UK.

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Small businesses are vital to our economy

Our Chief Operating Officer, Bea Montoya, said: “Small businesses are vital to our economy and will be at the heart of our collective recovery from the pandemic. Our data shows that increasingly it’s women who are leading the way. And given the number of female-owned small businesses continues to rise consistently year-on-year, we can only expect this to continue into 2022 and beyond.

“At Simply Business, we’re proud to support the thousands of remarkable women up and down the country who have stepped up to run successful and thriving small businesses.”

Top business trends 2021

Have you recently started your own small business? Let us know in the comments.