One million Canadian women will own a small business by 2010, according to Women Entrepreneurs: Leading the Charge, an economic report produced by CIBC World Markets.

In the past 15 years, there has been a 50-per-cent increase in the number of self-employed women in Canada, according to the June 2005 report.

“Canada is now home to more than 800,000 women entrepreneurs, and this figure has been growing at an average annual rate of 3.3 per cent since 1989, which is 60 per cent faster than the growth in the number of small businesses run by men during the same period,” said Rob Paterson, senior vice president of CIBC Small Business Banking. “Western Canada appears to be the preferred location for women entrepreneurs, with B.C. and Alberta showing the highest rates of growth in the number of self-employed women, followed by Ontario.”

Some of the other key findings in the report include:

While owning a business is the sole source of income for nearly one in three (32 per cent) women entrepreneurs, 40 per cent of self-employed women have a working spouse to supplement their income from the business.

Between 2001 and 2004, revenue growth for firms run by single self-employed women rose by a cumulative 70 per cent – three times faster than revenue growth among firms run by married women.

More than eight in 10 (82 per cent) women small business owners say that if they had it to do over again, they would definitely open their own business again.

Only one in five (22 per cent) women entrepreneurs say their business is geared toward a female clientele.

The report is based on responses to a 2004 Decima Research poll, which canvassed 1,829 randomly selected Canadian small business owners. The complete report is available at www.cibc.com/ca/womenentrepreneurs.