Confronting the female founder’s scaling while caring dilemma
For many SME leaders, particularly female founders, the tension between caregiving responsibilities and business growth ambitions can feel like an impossible choice. Too often, expansion opportunities are postponed, or businesses are deliberately slowed because the path to scaling appears incompatible with family obligations.
As Programme Director for the Help to Grow: Management Course at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, I’ve witnessed the realities of this dilemma first hand. But I’ve also seen how leaders can apply strategic frameworks and approaches to achieve a better balance and avoid putting entrepreneurial dreams on hold.
The scale of the issue
The numbers paint a clear picture, with female entrepreneurs spending twice as long on caregiving as their male counterparts (6-10 hours versus 0-5 for their male counterparts). This dual burden often results in immense guilt and difficult trade-offs.
Nearly six out of 10 women say caring responsibilities have stopped them from applying for promotion or a new job and globally, women are 47% more likely than men to close a business for family or personal reasons.
Approaches for achieving balance
My experience working with female founders has revealed a number of practical strategies that allow leaders to maintain business momentum while meeting caregiving obligations:
- Delegate effectively: the ability to delegate effectively is crucial to growing a business while meeting other responsibilities. Many leaders experience breakthroughs when they create action plans that set clear expectations across their team, enabling others to step up confidently when needed. This allows leaders to handle urgent caregiving needs without compromising business goals, while simultaneously empowering team members entrusted with greater responsibility
- Focus on your role as leader: this means identifying the handful of tasks that genuinely require your attention and letting go of the rest. Many founders I work with find success by focusing intently on strategic decisions that only they can make
- Lean into the skills caregiving strengthens: it’s important to acknowledge that caregiving responsibilities also equip caregivers with invaluable workplace skills. Caregivers tend to be more resilient, stronger problem-solvers, and excellent jugglers – these aren’t peripheral qualities; they’re precisely the capabilities businesses need. Lean into them
- Leverage peer support and perspectives: cohort-based programmes like the Help to Grow: Management Course create what I call “that peer-to-peer element” where isolated business owners gain access to varied perspectives. A lot of the lightbulb moments I witness come because somebody’s come along with a completely new perspective, a new background or shared valuable advice from their own experiences
- Consider a mentor: mentorship is a key aspect of the Help to Grow: Management Course and can take the peer support element a step further. A mentor offers something very targeted – someone who has faced your specific challenges and found ways through. They understand specific pressures and are well qualified to provide both practical strategies and reassurance
- Be open: perhaps most crucially, transparency matters. Many female founders I work with underestimate how understanding their teams, families, and even clients will be when they’re honest about their priorities and boundaries. Caregiving responsibilities shouldn’t be hidden or apologised for; they’re simply part of real life
One final thought, the professional world is changing and becoming more open to flexible ways of working, even for leaders. Arguably, the pandemic has made a lasting mark on business culture that has perhaps made a more level field for female founders with responsibilities outside their business.
With the right business frameworks, strategies and confidence, female leaders with caregiving responsibilities do not need to sacrifice one area of their life to fulfil their duties in another.
Case study: MacMartin
Claire MacDonald, Creative Director of MacMartin, a Derbyshire-based marketing agency, embodies this journey. When she and her sister founded the agency, they believed self-employment would provide the flexibility two caregivers needed.
Initially it did, but as the business gained traction that balance evaporated. The turning point for Claire came on a trip to see Santa with her daughters when an urgent client meeting request intruded on her thoughts. She delegated it to a team member who handled it brilliantly and made her realise she couldn’t, and shouldn’t, do everything alone.
Claire subsequently attended the Help to Grow: Management Course and used the lessons and frameworks she gained to build a strategy that could help her achieve an optimal balance between growing a business and fulfilling caregiving responsibilities.
Her key takeaways:
- Hire for culture over skills. MacMartin prioritises resilience, accountability, and willingness to support each other as caregivers
- Set firm boundaries. Claire identifies three main tasks per day, maintains distinct home and work time, and focuses on outcomes rather than hours
- Perhaps most crucially, align your entire ecosystem. MacMartin is as selective with clients as with staff. The result? A snowball effect of enjoyable projects, improved morale, and better income
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