Women Entrepreneurs

BBC Radio 4

Woman's Hour

9th February 2011

Rebecca Harding was interviewed by Jenni Murray for a special edition of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. The programme is running a series of special editions looking at Women and Entrpeneurship. Over the next few weeks they will be following several women through their trials and tribulations and will be taking a look at a range of issues which relate specifically to Women as they are thinking about the possibility of setting up a business.

Rebecca was interviewed as a provider of data which allowed the whole programme to be set in context and also exploded a few myths about Women and Entrpreneurship. Listen to her interview here

Rebecca raised a whole range of issues and questions in this and other interviews and talks she has given:

Women's businesses turnovers have dropped more than men's in 2008/9 and also in 2009/10: 2008/9 all turnovers dropped by 20% (women's by 46% men's by 14%) 2009/10 all turnovers increased by 3% (women's dropped by 3%, men's increased by 9%).

She argues that one of the reasons why is more women tend to be in sectors which are more vulnerable, such as retail or consumer services. They therefore suffer proportionately more than businesses in other sectors.

But there are many positives as well: The number of women owning growth oriented enterprises has increased from 13.5% in in 2008 to 17% in 2010, according to Delta Economics's COGS data surveys.

Also, from the same source: Women owned high growth businesses have created more jobs than a similar sampe of male owned ones. They also expect to grow faster.

Setting up a business: Women are only half as likely to start a business, are more likely to allow a 'fear of failure' to stop them and also say that 'they do not have the right skills' to start up.

And in addition,  once they have started and have grown for at least 2 years, the percentage of women owned high groth businesses has dropped from that 'half as likely to start up' to only 17%. Obviously a lot of women do not persist.One question is 'why is this the case?'

Much of the research and data is from Delta Economic's COGS surveys of 2008, 2009 and the soon to be published 2010 reports. Rebecca Harding is writing a special edition or Women Entrepreneurs based on this and other research data.