Britain’s first female Chancellor must make more of the untapped power of women, says
Our first female Chancellor Rachel Reeves is desperate for growth. She knows it is the best hope to dig herself and the rest of us out of a doom loop of ever higher national debt and taxes to try to pay for a way of life and welfare provision the country cannot afford.
One source of huge growth potential that remains largely untapped is female entrepreneurs.
If female founders set up and grew businesses at the same rate as men, it would boost the economy by as much as £250billion, according to the Invest in Women Taskforce, which aims to do what it says on the tin.
I have been privileged to interview some brilliant female entrepreneurs, including most recently Kiki McDonough who has run her eponymous jewellery business for 40 years and is highly critical of Reeves.
For every success story, however, countless women quietly fall by the wayside. The biggest problem is simple: money. Banks no longer discriminate, at least not openly, when it comes to loans, as was the case with McDonough earlier in her career.
The problem is further up the chain when start-ups want to scale up. It is a particular challenge for female founders who are starved of capital. Female-led firms received a derisory 1.8 per cent or £145m of equity investment in the first half of last year. That actually went backwards, from 2.5 per cent the previous year.
Out of touch: Rachel Reeves has a lack of affinity with wealth-creating entrepreneurs, even when these are other women.
Female investors are far more likely to invest in female founders than male ones, but there are not that many of them. Women remain thin on the ground in the upper levels of venture capital and private equity. The Invest in Women Taskforce, therefore, is trying to increase the number of female ‘angel’ investors – wealthy individuals who back early stage companies.
It is also setting up a new ‘Women backing Women’ fund to channel capital to female-led firms. Equity investor BGF (Business Growth Fund) has committed £300m to a funding pool.
A decade or so ago there was a similar drive for more women in company boardrooms. Although parity is a long way off, female representation has improved dramatically. We now have some excellent female CEOs in the FTSE 100, including Amanda Blanc at Aviva and Emma Walmsley at GSK. Debbie Crosbie, who has just been awarded a damehood, flies the flag at Nationwide Building Society.
The hope is that could be replicated with female entrepreneurs, but it is a battle that needs to be fought over and over again. Women are particularly under-represented within tech and AI entrepreneurship, where there is huge fundraising going on.
There is a real danger the language of the future is being written by men, for men.
Investing in women’s businesses is not about inclusion, diversity or charity, it is about making the most of talent and the widest possible opportunities available to investors. Reeves could have been a powerful role model. In fairness, she has given her backing to the taskforce.
But her moves so far have been anti-entrepreneurial to the hilt. Raising employer National Insurance Contributions is a deterrent to firms hiring staff, which in turn is a brake on their growth. It also hits women particularly hard because they are over-represented in the retail sector, where the measure has had most effect.
Reeves is hamstrung by her tribal Labour instinct to pander to the public sector and her lack of affinity with wealth-creating entrepreneurs, even when these are other women.
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