Supporting women in business

We’ve committed to welcoming 200,000 female-led businesses to Tide by the end of 2027. This builds upon our earlier achievement and adds to the 100,000 women entrepreneurs we’ve already onboarded in 2023.* We believe gender should not be a barrier to starting your own business, which is why we’re making it our mission to support more women in entrepreneurship.

Despite record numbers of female-led companies being launched in the UK each year, the process of starting a business remains difficult for too many women. We want to support entrepreneurial women in their journey and believe we’re in a strong position to do exactly that. Working with small businesses every day, we understand the support and guidance needed to make the big step to start out in business – whether it’s as a contractor, freelancer, sole trader, or small business owner. We’re listening to our members to create a new commitment that will support more women becoming entrepreneurs in the UK.

Commitment objectives include

We’ve committed to helping create 200,000 female-led businesses by the end of 2027 – building upon our earlier achievement in 2023

Tracking, reporting on and promoting female entrepreneurs using Tide

Organising initiatives and events to support women in opening their own businesses – both led by Tide and through our collaboration with Mastercard’s Strive programme

Delivering our Women in Business content series to inspire, inform and champion our female members

Key findings

We've surveyed nearly 2,000 Tide members** to learn more about the top roadblocks making it harder for women to become entrepreneurs, as well as the reasons why they become entrepreneurs and the opportunities available to boost their businesses. We're using this data to identify how we can best support more women in starting out in business.

What our female members say about starting ♀️

Almost 1 in 5 women cited gender as a barrier to successfully launching a business
More than 1 in 2 women across the UK find it challenging to start their own business
More than 2 in 3 Black female business owners find launching a venture hard - much higher than their white and Indian counterparts.
Women in Northern Ireland, Scotland and North East England find it the hardest to start their own business.

Greatest obstacle 🛑

The top challenges for women launching a business are:

54% Not being able to secure investment, loan or money from friends/family
11% No having a business mentor or a role model
9% Limited knowledge on how to set up a business
8% Lack of self-confidence
7% Limited knowledge of the business area

Motivation 🚀

Top motivations for becoming an entrepreneur for women include:

To be their own boss
To pursue a creative business idea
To put their specialist skills to work
For flexible working hours, better work-life balance

Main areas of support 🤝

The top areas where more support is needed are:

Marketing, sales and other business growth support
Accountancy and financial planning
Business mentoring, advisory, learning and development
Networking
Grant lists and applications

*Based on an average sample survey of Tide members.
**The Tide member survey was conducted between 3 and 7 February 2023, with 1,961 total respondents.