By Tandi Potgieter, CEO of Icarus Media, Director and Board Member, Woman of Stature Awards South Africa. Co-Director of Mrs Soweto

 

When we speak about small business in South Africa, we often speak in the language of survival. We speak about unemployment, access to finance, rising costs, late payments, red tape and the resilience required to keep the doors open.

 

But that is only part of the story.

 

Small businesses are not only economic engines. In the hands of women entrepreneurs, they often become community engines. Across South Africa, women-owned businesses are doing far more than selling products or services. They are feeding families, creating work, supporting schools, mentoring young people, uplifting local suppliers and building networks of opportunity around them.

 

This is why supporting women-owned businesses matters. Not because women deserve charity. Not because empowerment is a slogan. It matters because when women entrepreneurs grow, the benefit rarely stops with the founder. It spreads.

 

One of the most powerful statistics in this conversation is that women typically reinvest up to 90% of their income into their families and communities, compared with around 30% to 40% for men. This has been reflected in research and development reports from organisations including the African Development Bank and Harvard Kennedy School. That one statistic should change the way we think about procurement, funding, enterprise development and networking.

 

When a woman-owned business receives a contract, it is not only a transaction. It can become school fees paid, groceries bought from a local shop, an assistant hired, a supplier given a chance, a young person mentored and a household stabilised. The impact moves beyond the invoice.

 

This does not mean men do not contribute to their families or communities. Of course they do. But the data shows that women’s income often carries a particularly strong community multiplier. In a country searching for inclusive growth, that multiplier should not be treated as a soft issue. It is an economic strategy.

 

In the course of my work, I have had the privilege of seeing women entrepreneurs up close. The pattern is unmistakable. When women build, they rarely build alone. They pull people into the opportunity with them.

 

A woman starts a catering business and soon employs other women from her neighbourhood. A designer begins with one sewing machine and starts training young people in her community. A beauty entrepreneur opens a salon and creates flexible work for mothers who cannot return to traditional employment. A consultant secures a corporate client and uses that platform to refer to other women-owned service providers. A township entrepreneur grows her brand and becomes proof that possibility exists where people were told to lower their expectations.

 

This is community building in its most practical form.

 

South Africa needs this energy. 

 

If we are serious about growth, we have to be serious about the entrepreneurs building at this level of the economy.

 

Yet women entrepreneurs continue to face barriers that limit their ability to scale. The World Bank Gender Data Portal  notes that women-owned SMEs remain a smaller portion of formal SMEs in emerging markets and often face greater restrictions in accessing finance, frequently on less favourable terms. The GEM Women’s Entrepreneurship Report has also warned that women in South Africa are exiting businesses at a higher rate than they are starting and running them, which points to a critical gap between start-up support and long-term business sustainability.

 

This is the uncomfortable truth: women are not short of ideas. They are short of access.

 

Access to markets. Access to capital. Access to procurement opportunities. Access to decision-makers. Access to networks. Access to visibility. Access to rooms where their names are spoken, their businesses are trusted and their potential is taken seriously.

 

Networking, therefore, is not a luxury for women entrepreneurs. It is infrastructure.

 

The right network can shorten the distance between talent and opportunity. It can turn a recommendation into a contract, an introduction into funding, a coffee meeting into a collaboration, and a conversation into a growth strategy. 

 

It can also protect women from isolation, which is one of the most under-discussed barriers in entrepreneurship.

 

 

Many women are building businesses while carrying the invisible weight of caregiving, household responsibility and community expectation. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2024/25 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report found that women were 47% more likely than men to close a business for family or personal reasons. The same report found that one in ten women, compared with one in eight men, started new businesses in 2024. 

 

These numbers tell us two things at once: women are starting businesses with courage, but many are doing so within systems that still do not fully support the realities of their lives.

 

This is why the community around women entrepreneurs matters. A network is not only a business tool. It is mentorship, accountability, referral, encouragement and practical knowledge. It is the difference between a woman giving up in silence and a woman finding the right person who says, “I know someone who can help.”

 

Corporate South Africa should be asking serious questions. How many women-owned businesses are in our supply chain? How many have we paid on time? How many have we mentored into real growth rather than invited into a once-off empowerment programme? How many women entrepreneurs have been given access to actual decision-makers, not just inspiration breakfasts?

 

Government and development agencies should also ask whether their programmes are designed around the lived realities of women entrepreneurs. Are they accessible to women in townships, rural communities and informal sectors? Do they account for caregiving responsibilities? Do they provide market access, not only training? Do they measure community impact, not only turnover?

 

Consumers have power too. Every rand is a vote. When we buy from women-owned businesses, recommend them, review them, tag them, refer them and speak their names in rooms of opportunity, we participate in their growth. We become part of the ecosystem that allows their businesses to survive and scale.

 

The opportunity is significant. GEM’s 2024/25 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report found that among start-ups bringing new innovations to market, women were at parity with men or ahead of them in 18 of 51 countries. That should challenge the outdated assumption that women-owned businesses are small, informal or lacking ambition. Many are innovative, digitally aware, community-rooted and ready to scale. What they need is the ecosystem to match their potential.

 

The future of South Africa’s economy cannot be built only from the top down. It must also be built from the ground up, through entrepreneurs who understand local communities because they live in them, serve them and rise with them.

 

Women entrepreneurs are often closest to the problems that need solving. They understand the household economy, the school run, the township customer, the informal trader, the unemployed graduate, the young mother, the community stokvel, the local supplier and the family trying to stretch one income across many needs. That proximity gives them insight. That insight creates businesses that are not only profitable, but relevant.

 

Supporting women-owned businesses is not a women’s issue. It is a growth issue. It is a jobs issue. It is a community issue. It is a national issue.

 

If women reinvest more of what they earn into the people and places around them, then investing in women-owned businesses is one of the most practical ways to invest in community resilience. The return is not only financial. It is social, generational and deeply human.

 

When we support a woman-owned business, we are not only backing a founder. We are backing the family she carries, the team she builds, the suppliers she chooses, the young people she inspires and the community she strengthens.

 

That is the power of women entrepreneurs.

 

They do not only grow businesses. They grow the world around them.

 

Sources: AFDB, Harvard Kennedy School, World Bank Gender Data Portal and GEM Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2024/25.

 

Tandi Potgieter, CEO of Icarus Media, Director and Board Member, Woman of Stature Awards South Africa. Co-Director of Mrs Soweto