Business & Finance

More Statistics on Canadian Women in Business

Additional Statistics on Women Entrepreneurs in Canada

By Susan Ward, About.com Guide

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Here are some additional statistics about Canadian women in business. You can use them for market research or reports if you like, as long as you properly cite the sources.

Barbara Orser. Canadian Women Entrepreneurs, Research and Public Policy: A Review of Literature. Tefler School of Management. University of Ottawa. November 2007.

Because this is a literature review, I have followed each quote from Ms. Orser's report with the complete references she refers to, as she cited them in the appendices of her paper.

"The majority of majority women-owned firms (85 percent) are microbusinesses employing fewer than 5 people (Carrington, 2006)"(p. 15).

"While the sector profiles of self-employed and women business owners are changing, women are significantly more likely to operate firms in the services sectors and less likely to operate knowledge-based industries and manufacturing operations. In 2001, four in five majority women-owned SMEs were found in service-based industries, compared with only 59 percent of SMEs owned by men. The most common service sectors for women entrepreneurs were wholesale/retail, professional services and information/culture/real estate, accounting for 18 percent, 16 percent and 16 percent respectively. Knowledge-based and manufacturing attracts approximately 6 percent of all women entrepreneurs in 2001 (Carrington, 2006)" (p. 17).
Carrington, C. (2006) "Small business financing profiles: Women entrepreneurs." Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 19(2): 83-93.

"The majority of self-employed women (62.7 percent) remain unincorporated solo workers concentrated within personal services and retail sales sectors (Hughes, 1999; 2006)" (p. 17).
Hughes, K. D. (2006) "Exploring motivation and success among Canadian women entrepreneurs. Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 19(2): 107-120.
Hughes, K. D. (1999) Gender and self-employment in Canada: Assessing trends and policy implications (No. CPRN Study No. W/04). Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks.

"Canada is a global leader in women’s entrepreneurship (GEM, 2000). The participation rates of Canadian women business owners are comparable to those in the United States and higher than those of other leading nations such as Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand (Brush, Carter, Gatewood, Greene, & Hart, 2006). ...female entrepreneurial activity in Canada is also higher than in Germany, France, U.K., Italy and Japan (GEM 2005 as cited by The Global Banking Alliance, 2006)." (p. 14).
Note: GEM refers to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Their annual reports can be found on the GEM website.

Paul Lima. Are Women Shortchanging Themselves? Globeandmail.com Business. November 10, 2006.

According to the 2004 CIBC Small Business Outlook Poll, "on average, revenues generated by women-run businesses are significantly lower than those seen in businesses operated by men. A third of all enterprises run by women generated less than $50,000 in annual revenue, double the number among firms run by men, the survey said. At the same time, more than 20 per cent of firms owned by men generated annual revenue of more than $500,000, almost double the number among women."

"In addition, women, unlike men, said they would be better off financially if they were working as employees rather than as business owners. When asked whether they were making more money than they would if they worked for someone else, female entrepreneurs were much less likely to agree (38 percent) than their male peers (55 per cent), the survey found."

The poll, which was conducted by Decima Research, surveyed 1,829 Canadian small-business owners, defined as businesses with one to 15 employees and having revenue of less than $5-million.

"Women Entrepreneurs often motivated less by money...” RBC Financial Group, Press Release November 23, 2005.

This survey was conducted for RBC Financial group by Ipsos-Reid between August 12 and August 16, 2005. The survey compared the responses of aspiring entrepreneurs to those of a sample representative of Canada's estimated 2.8 million existing small-and-medium-size business owners.

Some of the study’s findings:

a flexible work schedule is a greater motivator for women planning to open their own business (63%) than for men planning to do so (51%).
36 percent of men planning to open a business plan to do so to become wealthy, while only 23 percent of women planning to open a business do so for the same reason.
The majority of women and men entrepreneurs (69 and 64 percent respectively) seem to be equally driven by a love for what they do or hope to do.
Women are less likely than men to start a business because they want to be their own boss. Women are more likely to employ a spouse or a child and to be first-time business owners.

"While career motivations between men and women may differ in some cases, the RBC study discovered surprisingly little difference in the challenges experienced by existing entrepreneurs regardless of their gender. For instance, virtually equal amounts of male and female entrepreneurs listed their three main challenges faced when starting up a business as finding clients (56 per cent for men/57 per cent for women); keeping a steady workload (38 per cent for men/37 per cent for women) and working long hours (34 per cent for both genders)."