Executive summary
The Northern Territory combines Australia's lowest classified female sole-trader rate with an incorporated-company rate slightly above the national benchmark. Women lead 39.5% of classified sole traders and 15.4% of classified ACN companies, producing the country's smallest structural gap between entry and incorporation. The NT also has a notably young women-led company base and national strengths in health care and professional and technical services, although progression to large-company scale remains a major challenge.
Key findings
- Women lead 39.5% of classified sole traders and 15.4% of classified ACN companies. The 24.2 percentage-point gap between these measures is the smallest in Australia.
- Micro-businesses form 82.6% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 75.4% of the male-led portfolio. Small, medium and large businesses collectively represent 16.1% of women-led companies, versus 23.1% of male-led companies.
- No women-led large companies appear in the classified NT dataset. This makes the progression from small and medium business into large-scale enterprise a central structural challenge.
- Women lead 19.5% of companies producing $50,000-$100,000 per employee, 16.3% in the $100,000-$250,000 band and 14.8% in the $250,000-$500,000 band.
- Companies aged up to five years represent 39.4% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 35.6% of the male-led portfolio. Millennials account for 34.2% of known female business leaders, the strongest female Millennial profile nationally.
- Women lead 30.2% of classified Health Care and Social Assistance companies, the highest result in Australia, and 18.3% of Professional, Scientific and Technical Services companies, also the highest jurisdictional rate.
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.