Yahoo Finance Top 10 UK cities to start a business as a woman in 2021
York has been crowned as the best city in the UK to start a business as a woman in 2021.
That’s according to new research from payments provider Dojo, part of the Paymentsense brand, which analysed data over the past year.
The criteria it used to assess which British city has the best working conditions for women to start a business included the five-year start-up survival rate, which is the percentage of cities that survive longer than 5 years, and cost the of living.
Other criteria in the index included data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on average weekly pay for full-time workers, the number of female employees, the number of females that are self-employed in the area and the gender pay gap.
Out of a total of 600, York scored highest with 433, with 66.3% of its women in work. The city consistently scored highly in the study as a city with the third highest 5-year start-up survival rate at 47.7% and the fifth highest for female bosses.
Following in second and third place was Wakefield and Stoke-on-Trent. Wakefield scored second place in both categories of the best places to start a business as a woman and where to start a business overall meaning it is a top choice for both men and women.
Like York, the city has several networking opportunities for women, including Wakefield Women's Business Club.
Stoke-on-Trent was also consistent in its scoring, with 64.3% of women in work and 4.7% of female bosses in the city. Gambling platform Bet365, founded and run by Denise Coates, the best-paid female executive in the world is based in Stoke.
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Ranking fourth and fifth was Sunderland and Wolverhampton. Sunderland had 66.3% of women in work and 4.4% of female bosses while Wolverhampton had 62.1% of females in work and 4.7% female bosses.
Making up the rest of the top ten was Southampton, Plymouth, Perth, Hereford and Peterborough.
It comes after a study this week showed that women in the UK hit the peak of their earnings aged 40, while men's average pay continues to rise for another four years.
According to TotalJobs Peak Earnings Predictor, this creates an average peak salary gap of £8,122 ($11,226).
‘Peak earnings’ is the age when you earn the highest wage relative to hours worked. Most workers can expect to achieve their highest earnings in the middle of their careers, and this is influenced by a combination of factors including experience, location, education, industry, and the companies they have worked for.
Once peak has been reached, workers' salaries either stall or start decreasing slightly until they retire.
The predictor enables people to benchmark their earnings and find out their potential peak salaries and at what age they could achieve them.
TotalJobs research found that women’s average salary is only higher than men’s at the age of 21, with men’s wages outstripping women’s over the rest of their careers.
WATCH: Why do we still have a gender pay gap?
