International Women's Day: The Telegraph's Women Mean Business campaign a year on
A year ago The Telegraph launched the Women Mean Business campaign to shine a light on the shocking funding gap experienced by British female entrepreneurs as they endeavour to launch their own businesses. Start-ups run by women receive just nine per cent of venture capital funding despite the fact around a third of businesses in the country are female-owned.
Just 24 hours after we launched our campaign, the Government announced a serious review into the issue - the Treasury calling it “incredibly important”. Those findings were published in September and the Government went on to commission an independent review into the challenges facing women in starting and growing their own enterprises, led by Alison Rose, deputy CEO of Natwest.
Today, the results of the ‘Rose review’ are published, making the first ever recommendations to Government about what it needs to do to help women entrepreneurs in Britain succeed. Because women are not a minority group - and when they flourish, so do we all. It is estimated that up to £250bn of new value could be added to the UK economy if barriers to success are removed and women start and scale businesses at the same rate as men.
There are many positive stories to tell and having identified this issue which is stopping so many female founded businesses thriving the Telegraph will continued to press for progress - championing hard work and talent where we find it.
In this video, released on International Women’s Day 2019, Claire Cohen takes a look back at the successes of the last twelve months as the Government publishes its review.
