A Tale of Two Generations: Gen Z Women Are Founding Businesses at Record Rates — Their Elders Aren't
Women entrepreneurs started 44% of new businesses in 2025, a decline from near parity with men in 2024, driven by fewer women starting new Goods-Producing businesses. There were some important exceptions: Gen Z made progress toward gender parity in entrepreneurship, and among Black and AAPI founders, women started more new businesses than men. While AI has made it cheaper and faster to start a new business, women are lagging men in AI-enabled entrepreneurship.
Key findings
Women entrepreneurs started 44% of new businesses in 2025, down from 49% in 2024.
Women accounted for 47% of all new Gen Z business owners in 2025, a higher share than all other age groups.
Gen Z women founders are twice as likely as Gen Z men to be parents or guardians of children.
Sixty-eight percent of new Black-owned businesses were started by women, and 51% of new AAPI-owned businesses were started by women.
Women are less likely than men to use AI when launching and running their business.
Women entrepreneurs lost ground in 2025 after achieving near parity in 2024
After achieving near parity in 2024, the share of new businesses started by women fell to 44% in 2025.
A surge in female entrepreneurship in the Goods-Product sector and in Personal Services from 2023 propelled women founders to nearly half of all new business owners in 2024. While that surge was sustained going into 2025 in the Personal Services sector, the female share of new entrepreneurs in Goods-Producing businesses fell back in 2025.
Women made further advances in the Community Services sector where they have started a steadily rising share of new businesses over the past three years.
Gen Z women are closing the gender gap while older generations are falling back
While the overall share of women entrepreneurs declined, the youngest women made meaningful progress toward parity with their male peers. Women represented 47% of GenZ entrepreneurs in 2025, up from 38% in 2024.
Baby Boomer women saw the steepest decline, dropping from 36% of entrepreneurs in their generational cohort in 2024 to just 23% in 2025. Millennial women also started a smaller share of new businesses. This shift may be related to caregiving responsibilities, as this generation is now in core family-forming ages.
Gen Z women founders are twice as likely as Gen Z men to be parents or guardians of children
Female Gen Z entrepreneurs are twice as likely as their male counterparts to be parents or guardians of children. One in five female Gen Z entrepreneurs has caregiving responsibilities, compared to around one in ten male GenZ entrepreneurs.
Fifteen percent of female Gen Z entrepreneurs cited caregiving responsibilities as a motivation for starting their business, compared to just 1% of male Gen Z entrepreneurs. Since the Covid-19 pandemic women’s entrepreneurship has been driven by a desire for more career autonomy and more control over their schedules. Caregiving responsibilities likely drive a desire for flexibility, especially among Millennial and Gen Z entrepreneurs.
Black and AAPI Women Are Strong Drivers of New Business Creation
Black female entrepreneurs outnumbered Black male entrepreneurs for the third consecutive year. In 2025, women started 69% of new Black-owned businesses and 51% of new AAPI-owned businesses.
Women of color are driving gains in women entrepreneurship rates, increasing their financial autonomy and building long-term assets.
Women are less likely than men to use AI when launching and running their business
The gender gap in AI-enabled entrepreneurship – including those who would not have started their business without AI and those who would have only started their business in a limited form – is particularly wide among the youngest founders: 16.2% of male Gen Z entrepreneurs say that they would not have started their business without AI or only started it in a limited form, compared to 2.4% of female Gen Z entrepreneurs. It is the generation with the widest gap in AI-enabled entrepreneurship.
Conclusion
Women's entrepreneurship in 2025 tells a more complicated story than a single parity number suggests. The headline decline — from 49% to 44% of new businesses — was driven almost entirely by a pullback in Goods-Producing sectors, not a broad-based retreat: women continued gaining ground in Community Services, and Black and AAPI women outpaced their male counterparts for a third straight year.
The generational divide is the more striking signal. Gen Z women are closing the gap with Gen Z men even as Baby Boomer and Millennial women fall further behind, and caregiving is emerging as a defining driver of that split — Gen Z women are twice as likely as Gen Z men to be parents or guardians, and fifteen times more likely to cite caregiving as a reason for starting a business.
At the same time, the AI adoption gap, especially stark among Gen Z (16.2% of male entrepreneurs credit AI as enabling their business versus 2.4% of women), suggests women aren't yet capturing the same startup-cost and speed advantages AI is unlocking for their male peers. If that gap persists, it could offset the very demographic tailwind — a more caregiving-driven, autonomy-seeking generation of women founders — that's currently narrowing the parity gap.
