Executive summary
Western Australia has a strong female sole-trader pipeline but the country's largest structural gap between entry and incorporated-company leadership. Women lead 43.1% of classified sole traders and 13.3% of classified ACN companies. Women-led firms demonstrate capability in productive middle bands and high-value sectors, but representation remains particularly constrained through the scaling pipeline and in capital-intensive industries such as mining, construction, transport, utilities and manufacturing.
Key findings
- Women lead 43.1% of classified sole traders and 13.3% of classified ACN companies. The 29.8 percentage-point gap between these measures is the largest in Australia.
- Women lead 14.0% of classified micro companies, but representation falls to 5.8% of medium and 5.5% of large companies - a 61% relative reduction from micro to large scale.
- Small, medium and large companies collectively represent 12.9% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 19.6% of the male-led portfolio.
- Women lead 15.4% of companies producing $50,000-$100,000 per employee, 14.3% in the $100,000-$250,000 band and 13.6% in the $250,000-$500,000 band.
- Companies aged up to five years represent 36.3% of the women-led portfolio, compared with 33.3% of the male-led portfolio. Companies aged 20 years or more account for 17.0% of women-led companies and 19.1% of male-led companies.
- Financial and Insurance Services and Professional, Scientific and Technical Services together account for 34.2% of the women-led portfolio. Women lead only 7.2% of classified Mining companies, the lowest female mining representation of any jurisdiction.
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.