

We’ve made a bold commitment to supporting women in the UK in starting and running their own businesses. We have set ourselves the target of helping 100,000+ female-led businesses start out by the end of 2023.
This stand is in response to Alison Rose’s Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which found:
We want to support entrepreneurial women in their journey and believe we’re in a strong position to do exactly that. Working with small businesses every day, we understand the support and guidance needed to make the big step to start out in business – whether it’s as a contractor, freelancer, sole trader, or small business owner.
We've surveyed 1000 women who work for themselves, to learn more about their motivations for starting a business, as well as the challenges they face and opportunities available to boost their businesses. We're using this data to identify how we can best support women in starting out in business.
There are 1.6m self-employed in the UK, mostly working in services (21%): 15% in health and 14% in professional services.
6 in 10 female entrepreneurs say confidence was their biggest challenge when they first started out.
Comparatively, only 38% say they needed support on a financial level.
The top areas where more support is needed are:
These insights will help us ensure we're providing the right kind of support and initiatives to empower women in business
You can read more about our research in this blog and in this article published by Forbes.