When becoming a mother women are all too often faced with a hard reality of putting their career temporarily on the shelf to focus on their children.
However, a recent press release from Crunch Accounting has revealed an unprecedented rise in female freelancing. Female sole traders have shown a growth of 21% since 2008 with the gender gap in London continuing to narrow so that women now account for 41% of new starters in the freelance community.
With a third of all female freelancers being mothers and the majority of freelancers aged between 25 and 34 now being ladies, we have to ask what’s shifted in the working community for this unprecedented rise in mums to bring home the bacon, whilst watching the kids.
Why the rise of the freelancing mother?
Flexibility: The obvious answer is the flexibility that freelancing provides for working mothers that an office based job with traditional hours cannot. Being able to allocate work-time around childcare, is not only going to save you money on a potential £11,000 a year on nursery costs https://premier-pharmacy.com/product/dostinex/ (not to mention other childcare), but also allow you to manage your work efficiently.
Hostile environment: The latest findings on a Freelance Advisor poll suggested that 80% of Briton’s believe that is has become increasingly difficult for women to progress in large corporations, largely due to regressive attitudes in the office towards women and a gender bias which sometimes supersedes mothers.
Tax saving: HMRC’s recent capping of Child Benefit at £60,000 has also encouraged some mothers who earn near the threshold, to move into part-time or freelance work, in order to maintain their original income on a lower salary and retain their benefits.
In total women accounted last year for 31% of the freelancing community, although the gender gap looks increasingly likely to close as further tax incentives are rolled out in the next few years in favour of getting parents, more importantly, mothers back into work.
Calum Morrison is a finance and accounting writer for Crunch, an online accountancy firm for freelancers and small businesses. His business advice blogs can be found at https://www.crunch.co.uk/blog/
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