Women are starting businesses. The problem is what happens next.
What India's new entrepreneurship campaign and Australia's first Gender Index tell us about the gap between starting a business and actually growing one.
Two things happened within weeks of each other that made me think about the way we talk about women in business. On 21 August, India launched the second phase of a national entrepreneurship campaign focused on helping rural women move from livelihood activities into sustainable enterprises. Then, on 2 September, The Gender Index Australia released its first national report looking at women-led businesses across Australia.
They are very different initiatives in very different countries, but together they raise the same question. Are we spending too much time talking about getting women into business, and not enough time talking about what happens once they are there?
That question matters to me because of the work I do through Brown Boss Babes but also as a serial entrepreneur. We talk a lot about starting businesses, building confidence, creating networks and improving business capability. All of that is important, but at the same time a business needs customers, contracts, capital, systems and a clear path to actually growth. The Australian data suggests this is where the gap starts to appear.
Women are starting businesses. Fewer are scaling them.
The Gender Index Australia launched its first national report on 2 September 2026 at an event hosted by Westpac in Barangaroo, Sydney. Drawing on data from more than 10.5 million commercial entities across Australia, the report gives us a much clearer picture of where women are represented in business and, more importantly, where that representation starts to fall away.
One figure stood out to me immediately: women account for 42.2 per cent of classified sole traders nationally. That suggests women are well represented at the point where many businesses begin. But as businesses become larger and more complex, the numbers drop quickly. Women lead 15.8 per cent of micro companies, 13.3 per cent of small companies, 8.1 per cent of medium companies and just 7 per cent of large companies. The Gender Index describes this as the “scaling cliff”. (The Gender Index Australia)
What interests me about those numbers is that they shift the conversation away from simply asking how we encourage more women to start businesses. Women are already starting them. The bigger question is why that representation falls so sharply as businesses grow, and what happens as women try to move from working for themselves to building businesses with employees, larger customers and access to capital and large markets.
The report estimates that 86.3 per cent of the opportunity to close the scaling gap sits between micro and small businesses. (The Gender Index Australia Report 2026).
This is interesting because when we talk about scaling, we often picture a startup raising millions of dollars or preparing for international expansion. In reality, the opportunity may be much earlier. It could be the founder who needs enough recurring revenue to hire her first employee, the business that needs working capital to fulfil a larger order, or the woman who has built something through referrals and now needs access to larger customers.
Those businesses do not necessarily need another introduction to entrepreneurship. They need support to move to the next stage.
Why India's new campaign caught my attention
On 21 August 2026, India's Ministry of Rural Development launched National Campaign on Entrepreneurship II under its rural livelihoods mission, DAY-NRLM. The campaign aims to provide entrepreneurship and livelihood training to 500,000 women, support the formalisation of 50,000 enterprises, orient 50,000 community enterprise workers and onboard 25,000 women onto e-commerce platforms. (Government of India)
The numbers are significant, but the interesting part is the training but connections to market. The campaign includes business planning, financial literacy, product development, branding and digital marketing. The remarkable aspect of the campaign is that it includes buyer-seller meetings, connections with retailers and institutional buyers, and access to digital marketplaces.
The Indian Government describes the aim as moving viable livelihood activities towards sustainable women-led enterprises rather than treating livelihoods simply as training interventions. (Government of India)
That is the part I keep coming back to, because we often measure women's economic participation by what we delivered rather than what happened afterwards. We count the workshop, the networking event, the accelerator or the number of women trained, but the more important questions are whether the business grew revenue, found new customers, formalised, employed someone or secured a contract.
Those outcomes tell us far more about whether the support actually worked.
India's model also connects women with markets
India's campaign sits on top of a much larger system. As of September 2026, its Ministry of Rural Development reported that more than 100 million rural women had been organised into more than 9.3 million Self-Help Groups and their federations. (Government of India)
Those groups create an entry point into savings, credit, enterprise support and community-based mentoring. But the part I find most relevant to the Australian conversation is the link to buyers.
India's Government e-Marketplace includes the Womaniya initiative, which is designed to improve women-led businesses' access to public procurement. As of January 2026, the Indian Government reported that more than 200,000 women-led micro and small enterprises were registered on the marketplace and had secured public procurement orders worth more than ₹80,000 crore. (Government of India)
That shifts the conversation from simply asking how we help women start businesses to asking who is actually buying from those businesses. I think that is a question we need to ask more often in Australia.
Australia already has many of the pieces
To be clear, Australia is not doing nothing. We already have federal business support, state-based women-in-business programs, accelerators, founder communities, investment initiatives and organisations supporting migrant and refugee women.
Procurement is also becoming a larger part of the conversation. In New South Wales, the Women-Owned Enterprises Australia Supplier Network is being developed to help women-owned businesses connect with government and commercial buyers. By June 2026, more than 400 women-owned businesses had registered and 237 women had participated in procurement-readiness workshops. (NSW Government)
In August, the NSW Government also launched a pilot with WEConnect International involving 50 women-owned businesses, providing certification and support to compete for corporate and government procurement opportunities. (NSW Government) So I do not think Australia's issue is simply a lack of programs. I think the bigger issue is that the founder is often still expected to connect the dots herself.
A woman running a business may need to find a training program, understand whether she qualifies, work out what comes next, determine what type of capital she needs, learn procurement, find larger buyers and understand how to become visible to corporate or government purchasing teams. She is doing all of that while also trying to run the business.
For migrant and multicultural women, there can be another layer again. You have to know these systems exist before you can access them, and you have to understand the language and networks around them well enough to know which door to open.
This is why the 86.3 per cent figure from The Gender Index matters so much. If most of the opportunity sits between micro and small business, then perhaps our focus needs to move from simply asking how we help women start to asking how we help them move forward.
This is where community can play a role
For me, this also raises questions about what organisations like Brown Boss Babes can become. Our community and are activites are important but they should lead somewhere.
If someone comes to a Brown Boss Babes event, can we help her understand what support already exists rather than trying to deliver everything ourselves? Can we connect her to procurement pathways, financial capability programs, mentors or buyers? Can a corporate organisation engaging with our community become a customer rather than simply a sponsor?
That last question is one I keep thinking about. We often ask organisations to sponsor women's programs, but perhaps we should also be asking who they are buying from. Who provides their catering, photography, marketing, consulting, technology, events or professional services? Are women-owned businesses part of those supply chains? Are multicultural women-owned businesses even visible to the people making those decisions?
A sponsorship payment can support a program, but a recurring commercial contract can help build a business. That is why procurement has become such an important part of this conversation for me.
We need to stop confusing participation with progression
The Gender Index gives Australia a useful new baseline. Women represent 42.2 per cent of sole traders but only 7 per cent of large companies. India, meanwhile, is testing what happens when entrepreneurship education is connected more deliberately with community support, formalisation, digital markets and buyers.
Neither country has a perfect answer, and India's targets still need to be tested against long-term outcomes. But together, they have made me rethink the question.
Perhaps we have spent too much time asking how to encourage women to start businesses. We should also be asking what it takes for the women who have already started to keep going, employ someone, win a bigger customer, secure a contract and build wealth.
Australia already has many of the pieces. The next challenge is making sure women can actually move between them.
For those of us building communities around women in business, maybe our role is not always to create the next program. Sometimes it is to make sure she knows where to go next.
Sources
The Gender Index Australia, 2026 National Report: Read the report
Government of India, National Campaign on Entrepreneurship II, 21 August 2026: Read the announcement
Government of India, DAY-NRLM update, September 2026: Read the update
Government of India, Womaniya and Government e-Marketplace: Read the update
NSW Government, Women-Owned Enterprises Australia Supplier Network: Read the program update
NSW Government, WEConnect procurement pilot: Read the announcement
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