Women-led businesses could add 745,000 jobs
Women-led businesses in Australia could support about 745,000 extra jobs and generate more than $100 billion a year in wages and tax revenue if they scaled at the same rate as male-led firms, according to The Gender Index Australia.
The national study, released in Sydney on 3 September 2026, found women are starting businesses in record numbers but far fewer reach larger company sizes.
Researchers used millions of company and business records held by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The dataset covers every state and territory and builds on the methodology used in the UK version of the index.
Women lead 42.2% of the nation’s sole trader businesses but only 15.2% of Australia’s incorporated companies. That gap between sole traders and incorporated firms is the report’s central finding.
Scaling gap widens as firms grow
The share of women-led firms falls at each growth stage. Women lead 15.8% of micro companies, 13.3% of small companies, 8.1% of medium companies and 7.0% of large companies.
A similar gap appears in the move from small to medium businesses. Male-led businesses make that conversion at a rate of 13.68% a year, while female-led businesses convert at 6.71%.
The report argues that the problem is not weaker performance once a business reaches scale. It found female-led companies that do scale match the productivity of male-led companies and sometimes exceed it.
Instead, The Gender Index Australia points to three structural barriers: access to capital, access to contracts and access to networks. It says those conditions shape the gap separately from the performance of the businesses themselves.
Its modelling estimates that closing the scaling gap would add more than $100 billion a year to the economy in combined wages and government tax revenue. That total is made up of $79.4 billion in additional wages and $24.4 billion in additional government tax revenue.
Tamara Bryden, chair of The Gender Index Australia, said the findings showed “a progression problem”.
“Too many founders are hitting a ceiling on capital, networks and customer access at precisely the point they should be accelerating,” Bryden said.
Bryden also said the study gives a clearer picture of where women are moving ahead in business and where barriers remain. She called for government, industry, investors and financial institutions to work together to remove those barriers.
