Self-employed workers and salaried executives: one third were women

At the end of 2012 in France, 900,000 women were self-employed or salaried executives, compared to 1,800,000 men (excluding agriculture). They shared the feature of being at the head of their enterprise, even though this enterprise only employed themselves in three quarters of cases. Women represented 40% of auto-entrepreneurs and 37% of “traditional” sole proprietors, but only 25% of SARL managers and 17% of directors who were company employees excluding SARLs. The activities of their enterprises were most often in personal services and healthcare. They worked less often with another person: this was the case for a fifth of women (190,000) compared to a third of men (580,000). On average, self-employed workers and salaried executives earned 31% less than their male counterparts. These differences in income to the detriment of women are pronounced in the healthcare sector and among the managers of SARLs and salaried executives, particularly in enterprises of 50 people or more. They are partly explained by differences in working time. One executive woman in ten earned more than 6,050 euros a month compared to 8,450 euros for one man in ten.