Just over one in 10 employed women in Alberta report working for themselves as their primary form of employment on Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, says a report by ATB Financial’s Economics & Research Team.

“These jobs range from doctor to farmer to graphic designer to restauranteur to engineering consultant to founding a brewery and everything in between,” said the financial institution in their recent commentary note The Owl.

About 128,000 self-employed women account for 33 per cent of all self-employed jobs in the province (as of 2017), it said.

“The gap between women and men is explained in part by the larger proportion of men working in sectors that lend themselves to self-employment, such as construction and agriculture,” said ATB.

“One in five (22 per cent) self-employed women in Alberta have paid staff with the rest working as ‘solopreneurs.’ About 30 per cent of self-employed men have paid staff.”

ATB said self-employed women work across all sectors of the Alberta economy but the three most common are professional, scientific and technical services (19 per cent of self-employed women operate in this sector), health care and social assistance (15 per cent) and other services such as fundraising, personal care and social advocacy (12 per cent).

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