Micro businesses represent 89% of all businesses in Australia, yet they are often overlooked and underserved.
As a key contributor to the recently launched Decadal Plan 2023-2024, Global Sisters – a national not-for-profit dedicated to empowering women-led micro businesses—helped shape three critical recommendations within the plan. These recommendations focus specifically on ensuring that micro businesses, often mislabelled as ‘side-hustles,’ are recognised as distinct economic contributors with tailored business needs.
The Future Female Entrepreneurship and Business Leadership report, known as the Decadal Plan, is a transformative blueprint developed in collaboration with the Office for Women, aimed at leveraging the underutilised entrepreneurial talent of women in Australia. This ten-year plan draws on comprehensive research and the lived experiences of female founders, particularly highlighting the challenges they face in accessing funding and business investment. It outlines ten key recommendations designed to create a thriving environment for women entrepreneurs and micro businesses, ensuring that they have the necessary support to grow and succeed.
As a key contributor to this report, Global Sisters—a national not-for-profit dedicated to supporting women-led micro businesses—played a pivotal role in shaping three of the ten recommendations (recommendations 5, 6, and 7). These specific recommendations focus on recognising micro businesses as a distinct category and ensuring they are properly equipped to thrive.
Mandy Richards, CEO and Founder of Global Sisters, who was one of 12 expert panel members for the Decadal Plan, welcomed the plan’s focus on micro businesses, “Micro businesses are essential to the Australian economy, providing critical flexibility for women,
particularly those balancing caregiving roles or facing additional and intersecting barriers. Yet, they are often overlooked, misunderstood, and underserved by current systems.”
Micro businesses represent the largest category of business in Australia, accounting for 89% of all businesses. They play a dual role—creating self-employment opportunities for the founder and employing others. Despite their vital contribution, micro businesses are
frequently dismissed as ‘side-hustles’ or ‘hobbies’ with a lack of critical valuation with adequate financial and policy support. Richards added “By recognising the value of micro businesses as economic contributors, we can ensure they receive the right support tailored to their specific needs.”
The Decadal Plan also emphasises the need for data-driven approaches to better support the growing micro business sector. As noted in the report, “It is difficult for financial institutions and agencies to support them when they don’t really understand them—but data can change that.”
Despite the growing number of women-led businesses, female entrepreneurs continue to face significant barriers in accessing resources. Currently, only about 22% of Australian start-ups (businesses requiring investment) are founded by women1, and in 2023 women-led start-ups received just 4% of the startup funding in Australia, where all-male teams took the vast majority of investment deals2. Yet, research suggests that if women were given equal resources, they would be more profitable3. Boosting the number of female entrepreneurs to parity with men would boost the Australian economy by between $71 billion and $135 billion4.”
Global Sisters has completed a three year research and development project that has mapped out the status, barriers, needs and opportunities of women-led micro businesses within the business ecosystem. Importantly, Global Sisters is calling for micro business to be elevated as its own category, separate to small business.
For the first time, micro business has been defined and valued as its own category within the business ecosystem. The three sub categories of micro business point to their value in enabling economic participation, creating self-employment for women and creating
1 Deloitte Access Economics, Accelerating Women Founders: The untapped investment opportunity, (2022).
2 Cut Through Venture & Folklore Ventures, State of Australian Start-up Funding Report, (2024). 3 As cited in the Decadal Plan 2024-2034, Future Female Entrepreneurship and Business Leadership (2024).
4 Boston Consulting Group, “Want to Boost the Global Economy by $5 trillion? Support Women as Entrepreneurs”, 2019 as cited in Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, A ten year plan to unleash the full capacity and contribution of women to the Australian economy, 2023.
work/ employment for others. From the mapping, it is clear that micro businesses are critically important as employers and creators of economic value in their own right, and as a pipeline of future SME and larger businesses that do require investment.
Typically micro businesses do not operate within the “startup sector” and do not require investment. They have unique barriers and characteristics to SMEs and therefore have their own specific business financial products and service requirements and enabling environment.
The Financial Services Provider Forum hosted by Global Sisters last year explored how the finance sector can better support this market. The forum was also instrumental in informing the launch of the Global Sisters Financial Pathways program, which includes access to the business financial acumen, finance, insurance and other financial products and services that help women in business to take control of their financial future.
In addition to contributing to the Decadal plan, Global Sisters has outlined three key calls to action for the Australian business ecosystem in its own report, The Future of Women Micro Business & Self Employment in Australia, drawn from years of research and the lived experiences of the Global Sisters community.
1. Elevate Micro Business: Define, track and elevate the importance of self-employment through micro business as a distinct category and a national micro business activity index. Recognise and make visible micro businesses as a unique, distinct and valuable category of business, separate from SMEs.
2. Create a supportive ecosystem to enable micro business. Understand barriers and opportunities in order to create a pro women policy and investment environment for women’s micro business. Collectively identify and address the barriers and opportunities to grow women’s micro businesses, positioning them as major employers and economic contributors, and as a pipeline for SMEs and larger enterprises.
3. Reform Finance and Support Systems for Women in Micro Business. Transform financial and business support systems for women in micro business to ensure a thriving sector in the future.
Global Sisters is committed to working with policymakers, financial institutions, companies and stakeholders across the Australian business landscape to implement these calls to actions. By creating an inclusive and supportive environment for women’s micro business and self-employment, we can drive long-term economic growth and generate significant social impact for the nation.
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