Having it all is a myth: Family and personal responsibilities keep women away from their own businesses

This year New Zealand has seen its highest rate of business closures since 2015, with 10,662 companies removed from the company’s quarterly register.

Corporate relocations increased by 2,786 (35.6%) in the second quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year. However, the impact of closures was not even.

Women entrepreneurs have been hit particularly hard: well-known women-owned businesses such as Supy, Sunfed and Mina have all closed down.

A global report found that family commitments and the pandemic have been bigger obstacles for female entrepreneurs than their male counterparts: A survey of 49 countries found that 18% of female entrepreneurs who quit or exited their businesses did so for personal or family reasons, compared with just 12.6% of men.

Our research explored the personal and family reasons behind women entrepreneurs’ decisions to exit their businesses, and although the respondents interviewed were based in the UK, their responses reflected experiences found in New Zealand and other countries.

Our research found that women entrepreneurs often feel they have no choice but to exit or close their businesses if they want to maintain their family life.

Family Demands

We interviewed 16 UK female founders who had exited startups for personal reasons that had little to do with financial or performance issues.

These reasons typically included balancing family and work demands and often included gendered responsibilities for caring for children and the elderly.

In partnered households, the man’s career often takes priority – for example, one beauty therapist closed her growing business to look after her children because her husband’s career as a doctor was too busy. She explains:

If we had both been trying to focus on work, we would have had conflicts and it would have caused problems for our children and family life.

Another woman who set up an Irish dance school franchise across seven cities reluctantly chose to sell, explaining that the need to travel with two young children meant it was no longer possible for her to continue running a successful business.

With one baby, you can travel the world with them. I would put my baby in a little baby bucket and take him to the dance studio and we’d be together for a few days. I hated doing that because it felt so unprofessional. But sometimes you just have to do it, right? But with two, I just couldn’t do it. When I was pregnant, [my second child]I was beginning to wonder what my next step would be.

Even women without children often cited personal, gender-based reasons: One woman’s harrowing experience with IVF made her reconsider whether entrepreneurship was the right career for her.

Another woman was dedicating her time to supporting her sister, who was an egg donor, after she lost twins to premature birth. Taking time away from the business meant her income slowly dwindled. She explained that the grief and emotional pain left her exhausted and unable to develop new business ventures.

It was like someone took out my batteries and it just didn’t work anymore.

We delved deeper into these emotions to explore how the women understood their decision to leave and to flesh out their “personal” reasons. Across the 16 interview transcripts, we recorded 47 different negative emotions and 17 different positive emotions.

This imbalance suggests that departures from the business are involuntary, but what is more worrying is the negative impact these feelings can have on women’s wellbeing and self-confidence, as well as their ability to rebuild their careers and professional identities.

Get it all

The women we spoke to justified their decision to leave by citing expectations that they would put their families first. They blamed themselves for not seeing through this opportunity to “have it all.”

Our society repeatedly promotes the myth that entrepreneurship is a panacea for work-life imbalance and the secret to achieving the career goal that many people desire: flexibility at work.

Uma, a former entrepreneur, explains:

I was told [business ownership] I think it gives you flexibility. I wanted a job where I didn’t have to work full time, but that was totally wrong, especially when it comes to starting your own business. It takes over your life and you become just a baby.

We need to have a new dialogue, recognizing that business and personal expectations of female founders are often at odds.

Business is costly

Policies and the media must stop presenting self-employment as a cost-free solution for women.

Sometimes it is a wrong career choice, especially when talented women could potentially add economic and social value in organizations with family-inclusive practices and policies.

Of course, if women want to start businesses, they should be encouraged and supported — women, especially those with higher levels of human and entrepreneurial capital, are creating more successful, sustainable ventures — but the evidence shows that a universal “more is better” theory is the wrong approach.

Too many advocates say government should focus on making it “cheaper, faster and simpler” ways to start a business. A more nuanced approach would benefit from first understanding the types of people who become entrepreneurs, and how their peer networks and funding environments might help.

Entrepreneurship continues to be pitched as a way for women to create work-life balance, but this needs to be balanced with a “reality check” about the poor prospects for those entering competitive and unstable industries, working part-time or as heads of households without additional, stable income.