Going Self-Employed Was Supposed to Fix the Pay Gap. It Didn't.

Part 1 of 3 in the DaM Good Business series: The Profit Gap

There's a stat that stopped me in my tracks last week.

New research from IPSE — the UK's self-employed association — found that self-employed women earn £51 less per day than their male counterparts. Over a full working year, that's £12,266 gone. *poof*

And that's without a single employer deciding what we're paid. Ooof.

Here's the part that stings: the self-employed gender pay gap, expressed as a percentage, is 13%. Almost identical to the pay gap for employees.

I know what a lot of women think when they take the leap into self-employment. I thought elements of it myself. At least I'll set my own rates. At least I won't be passed over for a pay rise. At least this bit will be fairer.

But the gap followed us.

The number of women running their own businesses has grown by 34% since 2015. There are now an estimated 1.64 million of us working as sole traders and freelancers in the UK. We showed up. We built things. But statistically, we're still earning less.

That's not a small problem with an easy fix. It's a signal that something structural is going on. And often that structure lives inside the business itself — in pricing models, workload capacity, or simply not having clear visibility on what the numbers actually say.

Now, it's worth saying: the gap has narrowed. In 2020, it was £65 per day. Progress is real. But it has been slow, and it has largely been driven by individual women changing their own behaviour — not by the conditions around them changing.

Which raises a question worth sitting with: why is the gap still there at all, when we're the ones setting the prices?

That's what this series is about.

Over the next few posts, I'm going to look at two things.

First, the psychology behind why self-employed women consistently undercharge — because it runs deeper than confidence, and it's not your fault. Then, I'm going to offer a reframe that I think changes the conversation entirely.

Because I don't think most self-employed women have a pay gap.

I think they have a profit gap.

And those are very different problems — with very different solutions.

Part 2 — coming next: Why telling women to "just charge more" completely misses the point.

Before that, here's a question worth sitting with: Do you actually know what your business pays you per hour?

If you’d like practical guidance on building a financially and energetically sustainable business, join my newsletter here