Executive summary
Victoria has a large, diversified and highly incorporated business economy. Women lead 41.9% of classified sole traders and 15.3% of classified ACN companies, placing the state close to the national benchmark. Women-led companies perform strongly through productive middle bands and have important strengths in professional, digital, cultural and consumer-facing activity. The decisive challenge is the medium-to-large pipeline, where female representation falls by half from the micro-company rate.
Key findings
- Women lead 41.9% of classified sole traders and 15.3% of classified ACN companies. The entry-stage rate is 2.7 times the incorporated rate, a difference of 26.6 percentage points.
- Micro-businesses form 85.9% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 80.1% of the male-led portfolio. Female representation falls from 15.9% of micro companies to 8.5% of medium and 7.9% of large companies - a 50% relative reduction.
- Women lead 17.2% of companies producing $50,000-$100,000 per employee, 16.1% in the $100,000-$250,000 band and 15.6% in the $250,000-$500,000 band.
- Companies aged up to five years represent 34.5% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 31.2% of the male-led portfolio. Companies aged 20 years or more account for 17.8% of women-led companies and 20.2% of male-led companies.
- Financial and Insurance Services and Professional, Scientific and Technical Services together account for 34.8% of Victoria's women-led company portfolio.
- Retail, Other Services, Arts and Recreation, and Accommodation and Food Services collectively contain 20.8% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 17.4% of the male-led portfolio. Women lead 18.4% of Accommodation and Food Services companies, the second-highest jurisdictional result after Queensland.
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.