First Day of a Female Entrepreneur: 1 in 3 self-employed is a woman

It is an idea of ​​the Flemish Minister of Work, Hilde Crevits (CD&V) to boost female entrepreneurship with a Day of the Female Entrepreneur† UNIZO, together with Markant and Artemis, conducted a survey among more than 600 female entrepreneurs about how female entrepreneurship can be further stimulated.

Gap narrowing

One in three self-employed workers in the Netherlands is a woman. The gap with men in our country is narrowing year after year and the percentage of female entrepreneurs in Belgium is higher than the European average. This is reported by the FPS Economy.

For several years now, the increase in the number of self-employed has been proportionately greater among women than among men, as a result of which the gender gap in the Belgian entrepreneurial world is gradually narrowing. While women represented 33.7 percent of the self-employed in our country in 2007, that percentage rose to 35 percent in 2020.

The FPS expects this catching up to continue, as female self-employed have a slightly younger profile than male self-employed. For example, 12.8 percent of them are under the age of 30 and 22.7 percent are between the ages of 30 and 40 (compared to 10.7 percent and 21.1 percent respectively for men). In addition, almost 85 percent of self-employed women are younger than 60, while that percentage is 80 percent for men. Most self-employed women are active in the liberal professions (41.2 percent) and trade.

The Day of the Female Entrepreneur can count on the support of six ambassadors: Femke Helon (3motion and winner of the Womed Award 2020), Alexandra Vanhuyse (Snowball), Hakima Farihi (Kameo Jobs), Gudrun Hespel (The Fittest You/Boost/Re. Charge), Bouchra Al Mehraj (The Urban Woman) and Kim Vaessen (Climatrix).