Edinburgh and South-east Scotland lead way regarding female entrepreneurs

Edinburgh and the broader South-east Scotland region collectively has the highest percentage of female entrepreneurs in the UK, with women comprising about 40 per cent of self-employed workers.

Business financial platform Tide has revealed research that analysed Office for National Statistics data to reveal the UK’s hotspots for female founders.

It has found that the number of self-employed women in Edinburgh and South-east Scotland was 35,000, compared to 55,000 men. Other Scottish locations to make the rankings include the Aberdeen City region, where 33.5 per cent of the self-employed are women, who number 10,000, and next on the list was the Glasgow City Region, which has 30,000 females classified as self-employed, equivalent to 33.3 per cent of the total.

However, Tide noted that achieving 50-50 gender parity when it comes to women starting their own businesses has not yet been achieved.

Tide says there are now more than 1.6 million women in self-employment in the UK today (file image). Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto.

Lize Haskell, chief administrative officer at Tide, said: “Our research reveals that the number of self-employed women has increased by 148 per cent since 1984, with over 1.6 million women in self-employment in the UK today. It’s great to see how women have made huge strides in entrepreneurship in recent years, with more female-fronted businesses than ever before.

“Starting your own business and taking that first step into entrepreneurship can be daunting, but there is lots of support and initiatives out there to help empower you. At Tide we’re committed to supporting women in the UK in starting and running their own business – and we have set ourselves the target of helping 50,000 women in starting their business by the end of 2022.”

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