Having it all is a myth: Family and personal commitments push women out of their own businesses

This year, Aotearoa New Zealand saw its highest rate of business closures since 2015, with 10,662 companies removed from the Companies Office’s quarterly register.

During the second quarter of 2024, company disposals increased by 2,786 (a 35.6% increase) over the same period last year. But the closures were not felt the same way.

Women entrepreneurs have been particularly hard hit. High-quality women-owned businesses such as Supy, Sunfed and Mina have all closed their doors.

According to a global report, family commitments as well as the pandemic posed greater obstacles for women entrepreneurs than their male counterparts. In the survey covering 49 countries, 18% of women entrepreneurs who quit or left a business did so for personal and family reasons, compared to just 12.6% of men.

Our research examined the personal and family reasons behind women entrepreneurs’ decision to exit their businesses. While the respondents we interviewed were based in the UK, the responses reflected experiences seen in New Zealand and elsewhere.

We found that women entrepreneurs were often seen as having no choice but to leave or close their business if they wanted to maintain a viable home life.

Household requirements

We interviewed 16 UK female founders who left their startups for personal reasons unrelated to financial or performance issues.

These reasons typically involved balancing household and business demands and often included gendered responsibilities for caring for children and the elderly.

Men’s career often came first in partner households. For example, a beauty therapist closed her growing business to care for her children because her husband’s medical career was so demanding. As she explained:

If we had both tried to focus on our careers, we would have clashed and our children and family life would have suffered.

Another woman who had started a franchise Irish dance school operating in seven cities reluctantly chose to sell. She explained that the demands of traveling with two young children meant that it was no longer feasible to continue her successful business.

Having one, I can travel around the world with it. I used to bring it in the baby bucket to the dance studio and keep it with me for a few days. I hated doing this because I felt it was very unprofessional. But sometimes, you just have to do it, right? But with two, it was like, well, this is no longer feasible. When I got pregnant with [my second child]I was starting to think about what my next step was.

Even childless women often cited personal reasons related to gender. A woman’s harrowing experience with IVF forced her to rethink whether entrepreneurship was the right career for her.

Another had diverted time to support her sister, to whom she was an egg donor, through the loss of premature twins. Her absence from the business led to a gradual decline in income. She explained that the pain and emotional toil left her exhausted and unable to run new businesses:

It’s like someone took out my batteries. I simply did not work anymore.

Delving into such emotions and how the women made sense of their exit decisions was explored and put more flesh and blood into their ‘personal’ reasons. Across the 16 combined interview transcripts, we documented 47 different negative emotions versus 17 different positive emotions.

This imbalance demonstrates the involuntary nature of business exits. But more worryingly, we draw attention to the potentially damaging effects these emotions have on women’s well-being and confidence, as well as the wider reconstruction of their professional careers and identities.

Having it all

The women I spoke to rationalized their exit decisions by emphasizing the expectations of them to prioritize family. They blamed themselves for failing to pass up this supposed opportunity to “have it all.”

Time and time again, our societies peddle the myth that entrepreneurship is the panacea for work-life imbalance and the secret to unlocking that much-desired career goal of flexibility over one’s work.

As Uma, a former entrepreneur explained:

I was told that [business ownership] would be flexible. I wanted something where I didn’t have to work full time, but I was completely wrong about that – especially with starting my own business. It takes over your life and becomes another child.

There needs to be a new conversation, recognizing personal and business expectations of female founders are often incompatible.

Business comes with costs

Politics and the media should stop presenting self-employment as a free solution for women.

Sometimes it’s a bad career choice, especially when talented women could add economic and social value in organizations with family-inclusive practices and policies that can support them.

Of course, women should still be encouraged and helped if they want to build a business. Many, especially those with high levels of human and entrepreneurial capital, create successful and sustainable businesses. But the evidence indicates that the universal thesis “more (starters) is better” is the wrong approach.

Too often, advocates argue that governments should focus on creating “cheaper, faster and easier” ways to set up businesses. A more nuanced approach would primarily benefit from understanding the types of people who become entrepreneurs and how partner networks and the funding environment can help.

Entrepreneurship continues to be presented to women as a way to build a work-life balance. But this needs to be balanced with a ‘reality check’ about the poor prospects for those entering crowded, volatile sectors, who operate part-time or who are the sole wage earners in the household without the benefit of secure additional income .