UK is renowned for the pro-entrepreneurship policies the government has put in place, but as in most of the EU Member States, the gender-related data is still insufficient to measure the opportunities that lay for women. As rebuilding the economy asks for all categories to participate to it, Women's Enterprise Task Force and Delta Economics have released two different reports on the added economic value of women led businesses, bringing recommendations to the UK government and respectively to all interested actors.

Challenges and Opportunities for Growth and Sustainability (COGS). DELTA ECONOMICS

Delta Economics has surveyed 2120 UK entrepreneurs that run businesses with a life between 2 and 10 years. Although women lead only 16% of them, the survey shows clear differences between them and the men-led ones, in terms of turnover and growth options.

Most of the companies ran by women are in retail or services, sectors that were hardly hit by the crisis. Consequently, the overall turnover of these businesses has dropped by 48% compared to their 2008 status. The men-led businesses, spread in various sectors, have overall felt a drop of just 14.4% in turnover. To recover the losses, companies need to invest in new products or services, in R&D, in marketing etc. Remarkably, there are not high differences with respect to where entrepreneurs search for these investments.

However, the surveyed women entrepreneurs have a higher confidence in external support (networking, agencies, professional advice) than men, with up to 4 times more trust in governmental financial aid, yet relatively fews access it. At the same time, 40.8% of women who run high growth businesses have either post-graduate or graduate qualifications compared to 32.4% of men. These are patterns on which policy makers can build new incentives to boost the number of female entrepreneurs and to help women enter into new sectors. The report can be accessed here.

Greater Return on Women's Enterprise (GROWE). WOMEN'S ENTERPRISE TASKFORCE

Women's Enterprise Taskforce (WETF) released a report with recommendations for the UK government to support female entrepreneurship based on the high contribution of these businesses to the GROSS Value Add (GVA). Currently, UK women-led businesses have a turnover of £130bn and bring £70bn in GVA. Other 150,000 UK businesses could emerge yearly if women started businesses at the same rate as men. The report puts together a complex set of data to make recommendations on 5 pillars: gender-data gathering, business support, business financing, public procurement and awareness raise.

The lack of gender-disaggregated data determined the authors to ask for gathering gender data through the VAT-tax form or other similar governmental financial tools. There are some other issues at stake. Lack of information holds back many women from becoming entrepreneurs. WETF has created regional entrepreneurship centres for women in the past 2 years as a solution. Such initiatives, along with including gender diversity objectives into state agencies strategies, can convince women who risk unemployment in the downturn to become self-employed.

The COGS report showed that women have a high trust in networks and agencies. However, the GROWE report discovered that women tend to finance their business through bank loans in a higher degree than men and take less into consideration private equities or business angels. As new business models emerge in high tech sectors, renewable energies etc., diversifying capital access is necessary. That is why WETF encourages successful women entrepreneurs to become business angels and coach in turn other women as well as to replicate funds such as ASPIRE, especially created for women's start ups.

Another important issue is that two thirds of SMEs do not participate in public tenders mainly due to lack of trust and only 3% of UK women-led businesses gain public contracts. WETF called for easing the procurement process for SMEs in order to diminish any gender discrepancies in accessing public contracts.

To ensure the sustainability of such actions, attitudes need to change as well. To start with, WETF recommends industry bodies to have women in their boards. This way, both government, through policy incentives, and the private sector through diversity programs can support the creation of new businesses, jobs and growth. The report is available here.