Record number of businesses created by women in 2023

The number of new businesses incorporated by female founders has reached a record high this year, according to new figures.

Females have created 160,730 firms in the UK to date in 2023, bring the total women-led companies to 874,730, according to the Gender Index, AI-powered research of over 4.6 million active companies.

The figure is a rise of almost 10,000 firms compared to the 150,000 companies created by women in 2022, which itself was a record high according to the Rose Review of female entrepreneurship led by former NatWest chief executive Alison Rose.

Jill Pay, chairman of The Gender Index, said:

"For the second successive year the Gender Index has shown an increase in the number of women across the four nations that are setting up companies, which is a further step in the right direction in boosting female entrepreneurship across the UK.

"More young women and ethnic minorities are raising external capital and running female-led companies than ever before, reflecting our belief that everyone regardless of age, race or gender should not face barriers to starting a business."

Despite the rise in female entrepreneurship, women still make up only around 17% of all entrepreneurs in the UK and research released earlier this year by the Gender Index showed accessing finance remains a challenge for female start-up founders.

Of all active female-led companies, less than a quarter accessed finance in 2022/23, compared to male-led companies which captured seven times more funding than females, averaging 70% of total funding in the period between 2021/22 and 2022/23.

Researched by the British Business Bank found that all-female founded businesses in the UK got only 2% of equity investment during 2022, a figure that has not improved since 2011.

In 2019, Alison Rose revealed that the UK economy could be boosted by £250 billion and 1.1 million more businesses if more was done to close the gender gap in British entrepreneurship.