The Gender and Enterprise Collective* (Haya Al-Dajani, Angela M. Dy, Carol Ekinsmyth, Sally Jones, Lorna Treanor, Julia Rouse, Natalia Vershinina)

Given last week’s government announcement of the stimulus bill meant to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the UK economy, it is important to recognise the implications for women broadly, and self-employed women more specifically. Such bills are notoriously gender blind, thus discounting the impact on the extent to which self-employed women are at most risk from the CV pandemic crisis. Further, self-employment is far from homogenous, so a blanket approach to support is insufficient. The self-employed contribute around a third of UK employment growth in the past decade; women-driven part-time self-employment has comprised most of this increase. Statistically, 34% of UK business owners are women; of these, 33% are sole-traders, 40% are in partnership businesses and 28% company-owners. There were 5.8 million registered small…