Self-employed women in the UK earn, on average, £51 less per day than their male counterparts, according to new data from IPSE, the self-employed association.
Over the course of a year, this gap adds up significantly. A full-time self-employed woman could be earning £12,266 less annually than a man doing similar work.
While the figures remain stark, IPSE notes that there has been some improvement. In 2020, the daily gap stood at £65, meaning the disparity has narrowed in recent years.
The number of women entering self-employment is also rising. There are now an estimated 1.64 million women working as sole traders and freelancers across the UK—an increase of 34% since 2015.
Despite this growth, financial challenges persist. Vicks Rodwell, IPSE’s Managing Director, highlighted the ongoing impact of the pay gap:
“Some progress has clearly been made on the pay gap in self-employment, but it’s still coming at a huge cost for self-employed women.
Our research shows that self-employed women are far more likely than men to say that they struggle to save money due to not earning enough. When they’re more than £12,000 per year worse off on average, it’s easy to see why.
Women know it’s not as simple as ‘just charging more’; where a man is seen as confident for negotiating their rates up, a woman can be seen as difficult or pushy. It’s important that we continue to challenge these biases and remove the barriers self-employed women face when advocating for themselves in business.”
