Professor Ute Stephan is a professor of entrepreneurship at King’s Business School, King’s College London, and an associate at the Centre for Sustainable Business. She is a psychologist by training, with expertise in work and organisational psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and entrepreneurship. Ute’s research explores the human side of entrepreneurship, focusing on how it can be a force for social good and a tool for inclusive economic growth.
“Sustainable and social entrepreneurship isn’t a niche, it’s the future.”
My journey into entrepreneurship research
I’m a psychologist by training and all my degrees are in psychology. I’ve done work and organisational psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and clinical psychology. At some point, I got interested in entrepreneurship, which might seem like an unusual choice on the surface.
When you approach entrepreneurship from the human side, as psychologists do, you suddenly realise that it’s about a lot more than money. It helps to shine a light on entrepreneurship as a more inclusive career path. If there are different goals people can pursue with entrepreneurship, that makes entrepreneurship itself more heterogeneous, which creates more useful solutions for all of us in society.
This perspective led me to my current role at King’s Business School, where I lead research and teaching on sustainable and social entrepreneurship, and mental health and wellbeing in entrepreneurship. My work spans teaching, research, editing, supervising PhD students, administration and public engagement.
The midlife mountain: Why women step away from social entrepreneurship
It has long been known that there is a significant gender gap in commercial entrepreneurship, with roughly two men starting businesses for every woman. However, social entrepreneurship tells a different story – women are just as likely as men to lead social enterprises. While we see that women lead half of all social enterprises globally, they’re actually three times more likely to start socially driven businesses than for-profit ones.
Yet, despite this promising start, my research identified a troubling pattern: in midlife women are stepping away from social entrepreneurship. We looked at over 5,000 early-stage startup entrepreneurs across 44 countries and examined when in their lifetime they’re most likely to opt for social versus commercial entrepreneurship. What we found was a very pronounced dip in the middle of this U-curve. At the beginning and at the end of their working lives — in youth and then towards 50 years onwards — there is a higher rate of social relative to commercial entrepreneurship for women. But then in midlife, there is a really pronounced dip.
This phenomenon — what we call “the midlife mountain” or “the midlife dip” — occurs at a crucial stage when engagement in entrepreneurship typically peaks. Yet women face systemic barriers that make it difficult for them to sustain socially driven businesses.
Sadly, this midlife mountain makes sense because this is when women face the most constraints in their life. They typically have caring responsibilities for children. They often also have caring responsibilities for elderly relatives. So, when costs like mortgage payments are factored in too, there are a lot of constraints both time-wise and financially.
The burden of care and financial constraints
The burden of caregiving responsibilities — for both children and ageing relatives — creates what is commonly known as the “sandwich generation” effect. Women particularly, at the same time as having caring responsibilities for children, will potentially also have ageing parents or other care responsibilities, which is double.
This is compounded by financial pressures that peak during midlife. The UK has some of the highest childcare costs among developed nations, meaning that the risk of running a social enterprise is even more challenging.
There is evidence that the UK is the third most expensive country to raise a child, for instance, after the US and New Zealand. If you have those costs, it’s not easy to say, “Oh, I’ll pursue a more complex, demanding form of entrepreneurship that I care deeply about.” You still have to make the bottom line work for your family at the end of the day. I emphasise that this is not just an entrepreneurship issue — it’s a social policy issue. We need good social policy, that in this instance also becomes economic policy, because it has to do with the cost and availability of childcare and elderly care.
The challenge of balancing purpose and profit
Women in midlife often find themselves navigating the tension between making a social impact and ensuring financial stability. Social entrepreneurship requires immense dedication but isn’t always financially rewarding in the same way as commercial businesses.
It seems to be particularly hard for women at that point in time to sustain social entrepreneurship, which is a bit more demanding because it’s more complex than commercial entrepreneurship. And it also doesn’t pay as well as commercial entrepreneurship.
The reality is that without adequate support systems — whether financial support or better care infrastructure — women are more likely to step away from pursuing entrepreneurial ventures that align with their values and passions. Even in societies like the UK that we think have a lot more gender equality than other places, study after study shows that women still shoulder most of the household and care demands.
Reimagining support for midlife women in social entrepreneurship
The conversation around supporting social entrepreneurs — particularly women in midlife — needs to shift. Rather than focusing solely on the financial aspects of entrepreneurship, we must also reimagine the systems that hold women back. As I said, one of the most critical constraints is childcare and elderly care. If we could do something about that, I think that would actually bear many fruits across the whole economy.
I believe we need to broaden our understanding of entrepreneurship. I think we’ve gotten a lot better at not just depicting white young men as entrepreneurs but also older people and the young. There is a lot of untapped entrepreneurial potential amongst the senior population, young population and women, if they could see themselves more as entrepreneurs.
This isn’t just about changing perceptions — it’s about recognising that entrepreneurship can take many forms. We forget sometimes that the breadth of entrepreneurship isn’t just about creating ‘unicorns’. Not all entrepreneurship needs to be venture-backed to create jobs and economic value or sustainable purpose.
The benefits of diversity in entrepreneurship
My research demonstrates how diversity of thought drives meaningful innovation and business success. What happens if you have socially sustainable goals, if you seek purpose, you take account of a wider perspective of things. Because you’re not just focused on profit, you tend to collaborate with a lot more stakeholders — people in the community, beneficiaries, employees, suppliers and everywhere.
This inclusive approach yields tangible benefits. In another study, we found that firms that had stronger social sustainability goals paired with strong economic goals actually had higher innovation performance because they were much better at what’s called “open innovation”. The more people you include in designing innovations that are meaningful and purposeful and that people actually need, the better you are as a business at selling those new products and services.
The future is inclusive and sustainable
Social enterprises are far from a niche sector — they’re a vital part of the economy. In the UK, about 1 in 3 small businesses are social enterprises and they support 4.8 million jobs. Even though we like to think of social and sustainable enterprises as niche, they are a fundamental part of our economy. These purpose-driven businesses also tend to outperform commercial enterprises in job creation and innovation, adding resilience to the economy through diversity.
As I’ve said many times: Sustainable and social entrepreneurship isn’t a niche, it’s the future. If we want to build a more inclusive economy and society, we need to ensure the systems and policies are in place to support those who are committed to creating businesses with social impact at their core — especially women navigating the midlife mountain.
