Women eclipse men in firing up Ukrainian economy this fall, analysis finds

Women account for 60% of all new sole proprietor businesses opened since the beginning of fall, according to the research of opendatabot.

In the first three months of 2023, for the first time, Ukrainian women surpassed men in terms of the number of opened entrepreneur businesses. In 2021, sole proprietors registered by women accounted for 49% of the total number of new businesses.

As of mid-November, the number of new women entrepreneurs is already higher than in the whole of 2021: 154,388 entrepreneurs against 141,575.

The total number of new sole proprietors this year is also higher than in 2021: 274,859 versus 262,933.

For the second year in a row, women open more sole proprietor accounts than men in the western Ukrainian Khmelnytskyi Oblast. The smallest share of female entrepreneurs is in Kyiv and in the front-line Zaporizhzhya and Kherson oblasts.

In contrast to the rapid growth of the number of women entrepreneurs, the share of women among company managers is not growing as fast.

In the first year of the full-scale war, the share of female directors fell by almost five percentage points to 28%. This year, the situation returns to the indicators of 2021: the share of female company directors has already increased to 31%.

In total, 32,800 new companies were opened in Ukraine since the beginning of the year.

Most often, new companies are headed by women in Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, and Kirovohrad oblasts. For the second year in a row, Kyiv and the region, as well as Poltava and Cherkasy oblasts, have the fewest female directors.