What’s going on?

You may remember my recent blog about my business turning 5 years old? Well, this time it is my turn for a milestone birthday. I know it is hard to believe (!) but I will be 50 in December!

As I will soon be ‘50 and Fabulous’, I wanted to do something fabulous for 50 of you! How would you like to grow your profits by 50%?

I will be hosting ‘The Fifty’, a business event at the wonderful Ardoe House Hotel on 12 December, from 1.30-4.30pm — solely for females … I want 50 fabulous women in the room. Click here for more details and to snap up your place!

Over a slice of birthday cake and a cuppa we will be talking about all things related to being a female business owner, from the gender pay gap to funding for women in business. There will be opportunities to network and promote your own businesses, and, as part of the package, you also have the opportunity to become a guest on my Scale Her Up podcast or Business Spotlight videos … or even both!

 So why am I doing this?

When it comes to women in the world of work, things should be 50/50, shouldn’t they? Equal opportunities for funding and investment, just as many female-led businesses as ones with male CEOs, women being appointed as directors … we do make up (just over!) half of the global population, but the odds can be rather stacked against us when it comes to business. I want to change all that!

The Rose Review

Alison Rose turned 50 the year she became the first female leader of a major UK lender with her appointment as CEO of Natwest. In 2018 she was nominated to lead the HM Treasury review on female entrepreneurship. The review highlighted the barriers for women in business and identified ways of utilising the wealth of untapped talent.

The subsequent 2023 review noted that more than twice as many female-led businesses were founded in 2022 than in 2018, despite the rocky economic climate.

Just over 1/5th of new businesses (20.5%) last year were all-female led, as opposed to just 16% in 2018. So things are improving … if slowly!

The Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap is a measure of the difference between basic average hourly earnings of men and women as a proportion of men’s average hourly earnings. It is not a measure of the difference in pay between men and women for doing the same job, but across all jobs in the UK.

As with most statistics, they can be manipulated to show different outcomes, depending on the data set. The main overall headlines are:

  • There is a still a gap (!)
  • The gap has been reducing slowly but steadily over time and, in the last 10 years it has fallen by approximately 25%
  • In April 2023, for full-time employees, the gap was 7.7%

I started to wonder what these figures would have looked like 50 years ago, so I did a little digging …

On 29 May 1970, (for the sake of my theme, more or less 50 years ago!) the Equal Pay Act 1970 was given Royal Assent. In the fight for equal pay in the UK, this was a significant turning point.

At this point — according to the House of Commons library — the mean gender pay gap was approximately 37%! After the Equal Pay Act came into effect, the gap for full-time employees decreased discernibly and then, around the mid-70s, started to follow a more gradual decline that we still see today.

The number of SMEs owned by women

Only 34% of UK small businesses are currently owned by women. In a recent survey carried out by Simply Business, there were three main areas highlighted by the 900 women business owners questioned which they agreed needed urgent improvement:

  • Childcare Support
  • Access to mentoring and networking
  • Government-sponsored funding

With many would-be-entrepreneurs, and those wanting to scale their businesses having difficulties finding funding or experiencing gender bias, it is so encouraging to see enterprises such as Female Founder Finance pushing the boundaries and creating specialist female business funding.

At Female Founder Finance, their aim is to provide a complete system of support specifically for female business owners, and to increase the 34% to 50% female-owned small businesses.

What more could you want?

As you can see, there are lots of reasons why I want to run this coaching session, or perhaps I should have written a list of 50 reasons why you should come to ‘The Fifty’ event!

Maybe there is just one reason you should come though … who wouldn’t want to grow their profits by 50%!? For just £50 you will benefit from coaching, discussing ideas, learning from each other’s experience, and a fantastic networking opportunity.

Sign up and we can work together to smash those statistics and boost your business profits! Plus, there’s cake …