Women in business: the groups meeting across Hampshire

Two businesswomen talking outside an office. Photo: Vitaly Gariev, Unsplash

Most business networking in Hampshire is open to anyone. A small number of groups are set up specifically for women in business, and they tend to be a different kind of room: smaller, often at a different time of day, and sometimes built round the realities of running a business alongside caring for children. This piece looks at what the national figures say about women in business and at the groups listed here.

How many businesses are led by women

The best regular measure comes from the government's Longitudinal Small Business Survey. Its 2025 results, published in October 2026, found that "around 19% of SME employers were women-led", compared with 14% in 2024 and 15% in 2023. That covers businesses with between one and 249 employees across the UK. The survey found women-led firms were most common in health, education, other services, accommodation and food, administration, and professional and scientific work.

A jump from 14% to 19% in one year is large, and survey figures can move from year to year, so it is safer to read it as "around one in five, give or take" than as a trend. The survey does not publish a Hampshire figure.

For scale: the Department for Business and Trade estimated there were 5.6 million private sector businesses in the UK at the start of 2026, and 74% of them had no employees beyond the owners. The women-led share above is for employers only.

Women starting businesses

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) measures how many adults are starting or running a new business. Its UK report, produced by Warwick Business School with NatWest and published through the Enterprise Research Centre, said in September 2025 that early-stage business activity by women had risen from just over 3.5% in 2002 to 10% in 2024, roughly three times the level of twenty years before.

The following year's report, Beyond the Unicorns, found early-stage activity across all UK adults rose from 12.0% to 16.8% in 2025, and said the growth was driven by young people and women starting businesses.

These are UK figures. They describe a lot of women starting businesses, many of them on their own, which is the group that tends to look for a network.

The groups listed in Hampshire

These organisers run women-focused events that are, or have been, in our listings:

Ladies Who Latte Basingstoke holds relaxed networking get-togethers for women in business around Basingstoke.
Revolutionary Women in Business runs a monthly networking morning for women in business round Clanfield and Waterlooville.
Freelance Mum runs walk-and-talks for mums in business, with business chat afterwards and an optional hour of co-working. Children are welcome.
Women in Tech Hampshire runs evening talks and discussions for women working in technology.
Women Mean Business New Forest has an organiser page with us, though nothing of theirs is listed at the moment.

That is a short list for a county of Hampshire's size, and we know it is not complete: groups that don't list publicly won't appear. If you run one, please tell us.

How they differ from open networking

Going by what the listings say:

Times are often later in the morning. Several of these groups meet after the school run, not before it.
Formats are often informal. A coffee morning or a walk, rather than a structured meeting with pitches and referral targets.
Some are built for a particular life stage. A walk where children are welcome is a different event from a hotel breakfast.
Some are about a sector, not just gender. Women in Tech Hampshire is as much a technology event as a women's one.

None of this means women-focused groups are better or worse than open ones. They are different, and many women go to both.

What the research suggests

The research on networking is not specific to women, but it applies. A large 2022 study in Science, based on experiments on LinkedIn with more than 20 million people, found that moderately weak ties, people you know a little, did the most for job moves. A small group you attend regularly builds that kind of tie. An open event adds breadth.

Support beyond networking

A network is one source of help among several. The same small business survey found that in 2025, 28% of small and medium employers sought outside information or advice in the previous year, most often from accountants (40%) and consultants or business advisers (31%). If you are starting out, publicly funded business support is worth a look alongside any group. In Portsmouth, Shaping Portsmouth runs an evening session for people with a business idea, and the Solent Business Growth Service runs one-to-one clinics with an adviser. Our business support page explains the kinds of help on offer and how to find yours.

What this means if you're going to events

Try one women-focused group and one open one. You will get different contacts from each.
Check the time and the format. If early starts are hard, the later-morning and walking groups suit that.
Read the listing for who it is for. Some groups are for women in business in general, some for mums, some for a sector.
Go more than once. Weak ties take a few meetings to form.

Our guide to your first business event and what netwalking is cover what to expect.