What do I need to know?

Female entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom is increasing.

There are now more than one million self-employed women - a 17 percent rise since 2000. But the gap between female and male entrepreneurship remains stubbornly wide. Despite women making up half of the UK population, they only constitute 27% of the self-employed.

(Taken from a Government press release - read full story)

Key Questions.

Q. Women Into Business - But who will look after the kids?
Starting a new your own business may mean that you have to make arrangements for someone to look after the children. Using friends or relatives is the obvious first choice, but what other alternatives are there?

Q. Women Into Business - Have you got the confidence to make things happen?
Confidence is not perfection or success; confidence is being prepared to grow beyond limitations, real or perceived.

Q. Women Into Business - What is your vision?
Having a vision that fills you with enthusiasm, inspiration and passion will make being in business fun, rewarding and much more focussed.

Useful Contacts

One Woman Business. Aims to aid women in business in the UK with networking, marketing, promoting and information. List your business for free in one business category in the online directory. www.onewomanbusiness.co.uk

Women At Work. Women at Work is a directory of services and products provided by women throughout the UK. Women listed on the site are self-employed freelancers, consultants, home workers, tradeswomen or running their own small business. Search the site for the service you need, or register yourself ... advertise your services in the directory and post up messages or events. http://www.womenatwork.co.uk

Womens Business Development Agency (West Midlands). Provide advice for starting a new business or developing or growing an existing business, as well as, Business Factsheets, tips and templates. Signing up as a member gives you access to benefits including their range of factsheets. www.wbda.co.uk

Women In Business (Northern Ireland). Women in Business supports and empowers new and established women owned businesses and women in management positions, by providing information, encouragement, ideas and business connections throughout Northern Ireland. Their website contains lots of useful information where ever you live. www.womeninbusinessni.com

Women In Business Network. A networking organisation for like-minded women from the fields of finance, law, graphic, interior and garden design, the arts and education, dental, medical and remedial practice together with a whole raft of entrepreneurs offering skills and services ranging from painting to printing to payroll, from data-base to dinner-party catering and from decorating to de-cluttering. www.wibn.co.uk

Women's Wisdom. Is an organisation that everyone can gain from. We work with all sorts of people and they all have something in common - they want to improve their life chances, but feel that they need some help in sorting out what they might like to do and also in having the confidence to set off and achieve new things. We encourage everyone to think positively about change and to think about doing something which in the future could make life better for themselves and for some, their families too. Some people want to find work for the first time in a while or maybe have just been made redundant, others want to find better work. It might be that you've wondered about self employment but don't know where to start. www.womenswisdom.co.uk

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