Young mums are doing it for themselves

By Jemimah Clegg

10 June 2014

More mothers with young children were operating businesses in 2013 than in the previous five years, an Australian Bureau of Statistics study found.

The 2013 Forms of Employment survey found 51 per cent of female “other business operators” were mothers with dependent children, compared with 48.8 per cent five years ago, and 46.2 per cent in 2010 – the lowest in the five-year period.

RMIT University work and family expert Dr Larissa Bamberry said some of the reasons for the rise were the high cost of childcare in Australia, the desire for a work/life balance and the difficulty new mothers had in finding suitable part-time work.

“Most workplaces in Australia do have, as an underlying ideal of what they want in a worker, a bit of a ‘male bread-winner’ model,” Dr Bamberry said.

Australian small business deputy commissioner Dr Craig Latham said technology had made it easier for people to start small businesses, but they still needed to put a business plan in place.

“There’s a lot of failure of new business early on, the way you combat that is good, professional management,” Dr Latham said.

Marketing and mind-set coach Christie Clements-Shepherd mentored women who owned small businesses and said they needed support early on to make their businesses successful.

“I think people get that it’s challenging to start a business, but I don’t think people are quite aware of the amount of work involved and that you need to be really passionate about what you’re going to work in,” Ms Clements-Shepherd said.

Dr Latham said he encouraged small business owners to “think big” in order to be successful, and not only target the Australian market, but to use technology to expand their businesses overseas.

“Entrepreneurs regularly fail, but they come back, that’s the entrepreneurial spirit, not every idea’s going to be a winner, but entrepreneurs back themselves,” Dr Latham said.

Dr Bamberry said more young mothers were highly educated and felt the need to put their skills to use, rather than working in an unsatisfying part-time job, but they often didn’t understand what was needed to start a business.

“A lot of them think of a small business as a way of generating a job, generating income, but they don’t see that what’s needed for a business is an entrepreneurial flair,” Dr Bamberry said.