Are we getting the full story on female entrepreneurship?

A few weeks ago, the Federation of Small Business (FSB) published a report entitled ‘Women in Business: The Untapped Potential’. Although the report has been widely welcomed by the enterprise community, some voices of dissent have said that while the report’s findings are illuminating, the way they have been presented to and reflected in the media has been disappointing. Key findings in the report, which were obtained via both focus groups and a survey of 1919 women, included the following:

  • The UK ranks as one of the top five countries for women’s entrepreneurship
  • Since the economic crash of 2008 the number of self-employed women in the UK has risen by approximately 40% (that’s around 427,000 new female entrepreneurs)
  • 75% of women entrepreneurs spend between 3 and 5 days a week working from their homes
  • There is no evidence to suggest that women who attempt to grow their businesses will be any less successful than their male counterparts

The report made a number of recommendations, which included the development of a framework for women’s enterprise, raising awareness of the support available to female entrepreneurs, and improving both access to finance and the quality of data collection on female-led businesses. In sharing its report findings with the media, the FSB will have hoped to have garnered influence, thus increasing the likelihood of these recommendations eventually becoming policy. Holly Sutton, Founder and Strategy Director at Journalista, a dedicated enterprise news and PR agency, wrote an article criticising the way the FSB shared its valuable findings with the world at large. Bemoaning the fact that the FSB led its publicity drive with a press release headlined ‘FSB to launch Women in Enterprise Taskforce’, Sutton said: “I think there’s a lot more they could have done with the report on the day of its launch and wonder why was this opportunity missed? What’s the point of writing a report if you’re not going to try and get your targeted audience of influential people to read it? Ministers and other key influencers mostly read headlines. Less, detailed reports. Otherwise they’d get little done.”

Sutton goes on to compare this particular media release with those the FSB has circulated on other stories. In pushing stories unrelated to female entrepreneurship, the journalist argues, the organisation is more daring in its communications. She says: “…such a ‘low-key approach’ is atypical to the its [sic] standard media relations style. A read of their last headlines on other reports the past week shows: “FSB warns of self-employment savings time bomb” and “FSB concerned over sluggish economic growth”, these are both equally important and divisive issues that will require cohesive policy and public affairs efforts. So why do they get punchier headlines and as a result, terabytes more airtime on earned media?”

Sutton also included in her article a number of alternative headlines that the FSB could have justifiably chosen to lead its report story with, given the breadth of its findings. These included ‘Female-led firms outperform those led by men’ and ‘More women cite ‘personal reasons’ vs. men’s ‘business reasons’ when winding down companies – why?’

So, is Holly right? Would the FSB have attracted more of the right sort of attention to its report had it led with a more eye-catching headline than that its pledge to launch a Women in Enterprise taskforce?

What do you think?

Do you believe the stories you read about female entrepreneurship are sanitised and unreflective of your real life experiences either as a female business owner or in interacting with female business owners?

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