Women have opened more FPOs than men in Ukraine since the beginning of the year

This is what the Opendatabot study says.

According to the statistics, Ukrainian women opened 189,776 small businesses in 2023, which corresponds to 51% of the share of all registered FPOs since the beginning of 2023.

A third of the new FPOs registered by women are in retail trade - almost twice as many as men in this category.

More than 10,600 women entrepreneurs have started their own businesses in IT - the second highest number of registrations - but this is only 34% of the total number of FPOs in this category.

Women also lead in other personal services (85% of new businesses are women), clothing manufacturing, education and HR (75%), social care (74%) and healthcare (72%).

However, when it comes to women heading companies, the trend still leaves a lot to be desired. Year after year, the number of female directors in medium and large businesses is decreasing. In 2021, only 35% of businesses were headed by women. A year of full-scale invasion has reduced their share to 29%.

Since the beginning of 2023, 3,849 medium and large companies have been opened, 30% of which are led by women.

The increase in the number of women entrepreneurs in Ukraine has been recorded since 2017.