Women-led high-growth enterprise taskforce report

The Women-led high-growth enterprise taskforce report, published on February 28, 2024, is a comprehensive study that examines the state of women-led high-growth businesses in the UK. Chaired by Anne Boden, founder of Starling Bank, the taskforce was established in May 2022 to identify barriers women face in accessing high-growth capital and to suggest ways to increase the number of women-led high-growth enterprises, particularly outside London. The report highlights significant gender disparities in the entrepreneurial landscape, revealing that only 18% of high-growth enterprises include one or more women on the founding team, while all-male founding teams make up 82%. It also addresses the funding gap, noting that women receive less than 2% of venture capital funding annually. The taskforce provides recommendations to remove these barriers and encourage more women to become high-growth entrepreneurs, focusing on fair funding distribution, providing tools for success, and ongoing monitoring of female entrepreneurship challenges. This report aims to support the UK government's target of increasing the number of female entrepreneurs by half – equivalent to nearly 600,000 entrepreneurs – by 2030.