Self-employed gender pay gap is £51 per day

12 Mar 2026

Self-employed women in the UK earn £51 less per day than men on average, according to IPSE, the self-employed association.

This means that the average self-employed woman working full time could be £12,266 worse off per year compared to a self-employed man.

IPSE said that this is an improvement on findings from 2020, which found self-employed women earned £65 per day less than men.

There are an estimated 1.64 million women working as sole traders and freelancers in the UK, up 34% since 2015.

Vicks Rodwell, IPSE's Managing Director, said: 'Some progress has clearly been made on the pay gap in self-employment, but it's still coming at a huge cost for self-employed women. 

'Our research shows that self-employed women are far more likely than men to say that they struggle to save money due to not earning enough. When they're more than £12,000 per year worse off on average, it's easy to see why.

'Women know it's not as simple as 'just charging more'; where a man is seen as confident for negotiating their rates up, a woman can be seen as difficult or pushy. It's important that we continue to challenge these biases and remove the barriers self-employed women face when advocating for themselves in business.'