The State of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Canada: 2025

The Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub’s (WEKH) State of Women’s Entrepreneurship (SOWE) annual report is a go-to resource for the most complete picture of research on women’s entrepreneurship in Canada. Canadian women entrepreneurs not only contribute to the Canadian economy they anchor it, making up 20% of all businesses, up from 17.6% a year earlier.

This year’s report also includes data from a new survey of Canadian women entrepreneurs, who are mostly incorporated and self-employed. SOWE 2025 uses the results from this survey to provide insights into what supports women entrepreneurs are utilizing most and the positive impact these interventions have as they face global trade wars and rising costs. The findings of this survey show that women entrepreneur participants received support through numerous programs of the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy over the preceding 12 months.

Top findings of this year’s report include:

• Majority women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generate more than $90 billion in annual revenues
• Majority women-owned SMEs employ close to one million people
• The share of majority women-owned SMEs has climbed from 15.6% in 2017 to 17.8% in 2023
• Additionally, women are equal owners in a further 17.2% of SMEs
• More than 37% of self-employed Canadians are women.

The 2025 edition of SOWE finds that women-owned firms are exporting at rates comparable to men-owned SMEs, and women are outpacing men in exports to non-U.S. markets such as the U.K., India, Brazil and China. Amid ongoing U.S. tariff disruptions, 77% of women SME owners say they have found or will find ways to limit impacts.

Access to finance is improving but uneven. Women remain more likely to rely on personal savings and family. In 2023, 27.4% of majority women-owned SMEs accessed financing from financial institutions versus 28.7% for majority men-owned SMEs; women who are majority SME owners requested smaller amounts on average ($127,307 vs. $365,183 for men), had slightly lower approval rates (88.6% vs. 91.4% for men), yet received a higher share of the funding requested (92.2% vs. 87.7% for men). Majority women-owned SMEs faced higher average line-of-credit interest rates (13.7% vs. 10.4% for majority men-owned SMEs).

SOWE 2025 shows strong progress among equity-deserving groups and Indigenous women entrepreneurs with majority women-owned SMEs accounting for:

• 30.4% of majority Indigenous-owned SMEs
• 21.3% of majority racialized-owned SMEs
• 38.8% of majority Black-owned SMEs
• 23.1% of SMEs majority owned by persons with disabilities
• 35.7% of SMEs majority owned by 2SLGBTQ+ individuals.

Want to learn more about the impacts, enablers and progress in women’s entrepreneurship? Read the full report for more insights and proposed solutions.