Gender gap in self-employment increases with age

Data on the EU’s labour market in the third quarter of 2021 indicate that men were more likely to be self-employed than women: 16.4% of employed men were self-employed compared with 9.5% of women.

Eurostat analysis shows that the gender gap grows with age, with a difference of 1.8 percentage points (pp) for young people (15-24), which then increases to 6.3 pp for people aged 25-54 and 11.1 pp for those aged 55-64.

In the third quarter of 2021, 22.6% of employed men aged 55-64 were self-employed against 15.8% of employed men aged 25-54 and 4.5% aged 15-24. Among employed women aged 55-64, 11.4 % were self-employed against 9.5% aged 25-54 and 2.7% aged 15-24.