In the past two years, with the economy disrupted by a pandemic and lockdowns, many people have had to find new ways to make ends meet. One less-told side of that story is that Companies House data shows 140,000 businesses were started by women in 2021, compared to 56,000 in 2019. The NatWest SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) Taskforce devoted its most recent event to discussing how women entrepreneurs can be better supported and financed to build on this.
NatWest’s A Springboard to Recovery report highlighted that increasing female entrepreneurship and the productivity of women-led businesses is one of the biggest opportunities for growing UK gross value added (GVA). More than doubling the number of women-led businesses and increasing their productivity by about 40 per cent would drive around £50bn in GVA, adding around 50,000 new female entrepreneurs and 260,000 more women-led businesses in the UK economy by 2030.
