By investing in women, we can spark change and speed the transition towards a more equal world for all. Investing in women and championing gender equality turbocharges a future where everyone in society can thrive, creating a world of boundless opportunity and empowerment for all.
We at Oxford Innovation Advice are proud to support many female entrepreneurs, business leaders, coaches and investors through the business support programmes we deliver across the country. However there is still more we collectively can do to encourage aspirational women to achieve their ambitions.
According to the ‘women-led high-growth enterprise taskforce report’ and data from the Equality Hub’s reporting of Beauhurst data, just 18% of high-growth enterprises include one or more women on the founding team – while all-male founding teams make up 82% of high-growth enterprises.
Women are underrepresented compared to men in every sector. Even in the most equal sectors, such as Personal Services and Craft Industries, founding teams with at least one female founder constitute only 37% and 34% of total high-growth enterprises, in other sectors, the picture is much worse.
Policymakers must also value, recognise, and account for the vital contribution women make to economies. While women spend around three times more time on unpaid care work than men, if these activities were assigned a monetary value they would account for more than 40 per cent of GDP.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), hourly pay rates for full-time women employees was 7.7% less on average than for men in April 2023. Although the full-time pay gap has been getting smaller since 1997, a larger proportion of women are employed on a part-time basis. These part time workers tend to earn less per hour, resulting in the gender pay gap for all employees to be considerably larger than the full-time and part-time gaps. Combining both full-time and part-time pay rates, the UK pay gaps was 14.3% less for women than for men in April 2023.
We pride ourselves on being an outstanding provider of business support for SMEs, providing specialist expertise and advice to help businesses to accelerate their growth and fulfil their potential. Designing and delivering business support programmes that nurture a culture of innovation to generate sustainable growth and economic prosperity for customers. We also aim to encourage, aspire and support women entrepreneurs not just on International Women’s Day, but everyday.
The business support programmes we design deliver bespoke advice to each individual and delivered by our teams of local experts based across the country. Each programme embraces diversity and is designed to help ambitious businesses to plan and successfully execute sustainable growth plans.
On average, 28% of the small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) we work with through UK Shared Prosperity Funded programmes is run by a female business owner or entrepreneur.
41% of our employed staff are women and 50% of our senior management team are women leaders, while 36% of our internal business advisers are women.
The graph shows a sample of the UKSPF business support programmes Oxford Innovation Advice delivers and the percentage of female led businesses that have engaged to date.
To support equal representation of ambitious entrepreneurs across the country, Oxford Innovation Advice will continue to advocate women led businesses, providing business support programmes and delivering funding opportunities that fuel aspirational businesses fairly, we have joined the Charter for inclusive entrepreneurship with their aim to facilitate a more inclusive enterprise ecosystem across the UK.
Entrepreneurship is vital for innovation, job creation, and economic growth.
Discover some of our aspirational women leaders here: Supporting Female-led Businesses
