As the first female CEO of a major British bank (NatWest), Alison Rose has fascinating insights to share about women in business, particularly in the finance sector. She has often spoken about the challenges, gender biases, and roots of female entrepreneurship, including on the television show Leaders With Lacqua, the podcast Thinkin, and a Women on Boards event for board members, executives, and partners.
Here are some highlights of her thought-provoking conversations.
Overcoming Challenges That Female Entrepreneurs Face
Across all these interviews, Dame Alison Rose explained that although the UK is home to countless female entrepreneurs, it’s still difficult for many to access business funding. Several barriers inform this challenge, including a lack of awareness of venture capital (VC) and equity financing.
In her Women on Boards interview, Alison explained that best-in-class countries like Canada and Australia support female entrepreneurs with 50% more capital than the UK does. If the UK caught up, it’d make a £250 billion contribution to the economy.
Despite this, Alison reassured female entrepreneurs that help is available. This support comes in various forms, including the initiatives she set up at NatWest.
For example, entrepreneurs can visit a NatWest branch and ask to speak with a woman in business manager. They can also take part in the bank’s free accelerator programme. When Dame Alison launched this, just under half (47%) of those accessing the accelerators were women.
Alison also discussed her work improving access to business support on Leaders With Lacqua. As a result of her team’s efforts at NatWest, the number of women-led ventures in the UK increased by 33% in one year, growing by 156,000.
Similarly, on the Thinkin podcast, Alison spoke about the billion-pound fund her team launched for women entrepreneurs in 2020. They anticipated this would be drawn over four years, but it was fully drawn within the year, so Alison doubled it to two billion.
Alison Rose on the Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship
As NatWest’s CEO, Dame Alison knew she was well-placed to tackle the barriers female entrepreneurs face. On the Thinkin podcast, she emphasised that “banks are in service of the economy” and “in service of customers.” Given their role to provide the economy with liquid capital, they must decide:
- Where they want the economy to grow
- How to focus on underrepresented areas
- Where they can make the biggest difference
Alison believes “very strongly” that organisations like banks, VC firms, and the government should get involved to tackle the barriers that women in business face. Although this can’t be done with a “magic wand” or “silver bullet,” there are several ways these parties can intervene.
This is clear in Alison’s Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship (2019). This government-led report featured society-wide recommendations to connect female-led companies looking to start up and scale up with growth opportunities. The report also listed around 500 individuals looking to fund women-led ventures.
The report considered that entrepreneurs need to access the right support and the right type of finance at the right time. Creating too much debt too early can present businesses with cash flow challenges and/or involve giving away too much equity too early.
During her Women on Boards interview, Alison explained that she wanted the Rose Review to be a data-driven report but also with practical actions to drive change . she designed the report as a practical resource for women to access opportunities that would strengthen their ventures.
She collated organisations and individuals who could support female entrepreneurs, considering this a “non-competitive sport” where she shared initiatives that have worked at NatWest with other banks.
The Impact of Covid-19 on Female Entrepreneurship
On Leaders With Lacqua, Alison discussed the complex impact that Covid-19 had on women in business. To begin with, the pandemic blocked many women’s business growth by leaving them with a disproportionate share of family care duties.
Research from the European Institute for Gender Equality found that while 40% of women spent at least four hours per weekday caring for children under 12, this was only the case for 21% of men.
By extension, it’s no surprise that 70% of women entrepreneurs found running a business stressful during Covid-19. Meanwhile, only 55% of men felt the same. Alison explained that while women took an average of 6/10 days for caring responsibilities, men took an average of 1/10 days.
Alison herself experienced the pressure of increased family care responsibilities during the pandemic. While running NatWest from her home office, her children were learning at home as the schools were closed. Even sharing the responsibility with her husband, she found that the experience added a “different dimension of stress.”
Newfound Support for Female Entrepreneurs During the Covid-19 Recovery
Despite the pressure on women throughout the pandemic, the enforced lockdowns birthed the remote working model. Entrepreneurs could network and collaborate online and work from home. When the government rolled back restrictions, family care responsibilities lessened, and the flexible work lifestyle remained.
As a result, Alison didn’t see any damage to — or slowing of — female entrepreneurship in light of Covid-19. On the Thinkin podcast, she referred to Business Growth Fund research, which revealed the opposite: 63% of women entrepreneurs were looking to scale their businesses as they emerged from the pandemic.
On a similar note, the MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs reported that 42% of women shifted to digital business models, 37% pivoted their businesses to meet local or global needs, and 34% identified new business opportunities altogether.
How Alison Rose Has Promoted Entrepreneurship for Girls
Also on the Thinkin podcast, Alison explained that women’s lack of business funding awareness stems from a lack of:
- Relatable, local role models
- Risk awareness (not risk aversion)
- Perception of skills and experiences
She also discussed this in her Women on Boards interview, explaining that, during her time at NatWest, she saw many more men starting businesses than women. On the Thinkin podcast, she described the barriers that women face as “endemic,” with few girls even considering entrepreneurship as a career.
At the Women on Boards event, she explained that while organisations like NatWest can encourage more women to embrace entrepreneurship, the gender inequality in this space often roots back to childhood.
Many girls disengage from some career options early in their educational journeys. Alison noted that sometimes traditional programmes only support students, particularly girls, when it’s “too late” at age 17 or 18. By this point, numerous girls have already opted out of different options within the education system.
Although the reasons for this are wide-ranging and complex, mental health issues perpetuated by social media can play a key role in this disengagement. Disconnecting from education early can mean that entrepreneurship never becomes a consideration.
Alison co-launched the Change a Girl’s Life campaign at NatWest to help “create the intervention and support” needed to overcome this. She also launched NatWest’s Dream Bigger programme, which involved educating girls in schools about, building resilience, and the entrepreneurial opportunities they could pursue.
The aim was to help the next generation of girls lead “fulfilled, active, amazing careers and lives,” which Alison wants for everybody’s “daughter and sister and wife and cousin and niece.”
Alison Rose’s Childhood Aspirations and the Importance of Self-Belief
In her Women on Boards interview, Alison recalled that, as a child, she wanted to be and do “everything.” Growing up in several countries, she wanted to “travel and meet people and be a doctor and a diplomat and an explorer and a writer.” At the heart of these dreams, she had received a “great gift” from her parents — the “self-belief” that she could “do anything.”
While Alison sees this belief in many girls, she also sees it “gradually erode as they come out into the world that maybe isn’t quite so ready to absorb that.”
Gender Biases in the Workplace
Despite her self-belief, Alison has experienced periods during her career where she wasn’t taken seriously because of her gender.
At the Women on Boards event, she recalled sitting in meetings and making a statement that no one responded to, only for a male to repeat it and receive credit. She also recalled going to meetings with a junior male colleague and the client directing all questions to this person, overlooking her.
Many women have faced experiences like these. Alison encouraged women to seek mentorship where they can talk about these encounters. She referred to the NatWest programme Male Allies. Historically, some women have expressed concern that they didn’t “need men to speak up and help us,” but Alison explained that sex or gender is irrelevant if the right person can offer the support needed.
Alison Rose’s Advice on Gaining Board Experience
Alison encouraged the Women on Boards audience to join small boards and clubs to develop their skills in leadership positions. She did this herself from a young age, becoming a lifeguard at age 15..
At university, she sat on many societies building experience and when she graduated, she competed in cox rowing and then joined some school boards and a variety of campaigns to raise money for cancer research.
Whether it’s a local sports club, school, or treasury committee, taking part can “demystify” what it’s like to be on a board. At NatWest, she made this possible through the Empty Chairs programme which she introduced across Natwest. She and her team ensured there was an empty chair available on all executive committees so young female talent could join.
This was important to Alison because when she started her career at NatWest, she also felt executive committees were for “terribly clever, smart people doing amazing, magical things.” She was surprised to find this wasn’t the case. “The more experience you get like that, you’ll realise you can do everything,” she said.
About Alison Rose
Having dedicated three decades to a career in financial services, Dame Alison Rose is now the founder of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a member of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) Council for Climate, and an advisor at the law firm Mishcon de Reya.
In her earlier career, she served on the government’s Energy Efficiency Taskforce, the Net Zero Council, the Prime Minister’s Business Council, and Business in the Community’s (BITC) Scotland Leadership Board, of which she was the Chair.
