Executive summary
New South Wales has a large and diverse women-led business base, with female participation broadly matching the national incorporated-company benchmark. Women lead 40.9% of classified sole traders and 15.2% of classified ACN companies. The evidence points to strong performance in productive middle bands and distinctive strengths across arts, business-support and personal services, but also a pronounced reduction in representation as companies move from micro to large scale.
Key findings
- Women lead 40.9% of classified sole traders and 15.2% of classified ACN companies. The sole-trader result is 1.3 percentage points below the national benchmark, while the ACN result matches the national 15.2% rate.
- The women-led share falls by 25.7 percentage points between sole traders and ACN companies. The entry-stage rate is 2.7 times the incorporated rate.
- Micro-businesses form 84.4% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 78.4% of the male-led portfolio. Female representation falls from 15.7% of micro companies to 13.6% of small, 8.4% of medium and 7.2% of large companies.
- Women lead 17.4% of companies producing $50,000-$100,000 per employee, 15.9% in the $100,000-$250,000 band and 15.5% in the $250,000-$500,000 band, all at or above the state's overall female ACN share.
- Companies aged up to five years represent 35.3% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 32.9% of the male-led portfolio. Companies aged 20 years or more account for 15.8% of women-led companies and 18.1% of male-led companies.
- Women lead 20.7% of classified Arts and Recreation Services companies, 18.5% of Administrative and Support Services companies and 17.0% of Other Services companies, highlighting important cultural, business-support and personal-service strengths.
Methodology context
The report examines active businesses across ABN sole traders and ACN registered companies. Where leadership gender can be reliably classified, entities are identified as women-led, gender-equal-led or male-led, with analysis across geography, industry, company size, business age, leadership generation and productivity. Percentages refer to entities for which leadership gender could be reliably classified.