Context

They live, eat, sleep and breathe it – along with every entrepreneur, women running their own businesses are wholly passionate about it. In the UK in 2006, there were 1,013,000 self-employed women, making up 7.6 percent of all employed women and 27 percent of the self-employed population. Black and minority ethnic women have been found to be almost two and half times more entrepreneurial than white women. A significant number of women choose self-employment because they can regulate the hours they work and better manage their family commitments, and they believe they can exercise greater choice over how they live their lives.

If women started businesses at the same rate as men, there would be 150,000 extra start-ups each year. Women are more likely than men to go into self-employment directly from being unemployed, being one in five women compared to one in 15 men.