Women's History Month 2025: Women-owned businesses and the profitable power of tech

March is Women's History Month, a time to celebrate the incredible strides women have made in the business world and an opportunity to spotlight areas where continued support is essential. While women are experiencing historic highs in corporate leadership—11% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 30% of board members are now women.

Against this backdrop, women entrepreneurs are not just participating; they're leading the charge. Seven in 10 (74%) women-led small businesses are actively pursuing rapid or steady growth, and their efforts are yielding results. A majority of women-led small businesses currently report profitability (84%), with a record 88% experiencing positive returns in the last three months—the most prosperous period since April 2023 according to Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey data. However, challenges loom large on the horizon, with 31% of these businesses anticipating roadblocks in securing essential financing within the next year.

Despite these challenges, what truly sets these women business leaders apart is their embrace of technology. Women-led small businesses are outpacing their male counterparts in digital integration, a crucial factor that's linked to higher revenues and increased productivity. This Women's History Month, we delve into the data behind these trends, exploring the successes and the struggles, and highlighting how digital tools and AI are empowering women entrepreneurs.

Jump ahead

• Success and hurdles ahead
• Navigating the credit tightrope
• Tech savvy success
• The AI edge
• Methodology

Success and hurdles ahead

The economic footprint of women-owned businesses is robust and expanding. In 2021, nonemployer women-owned businesses, those that operate without paid employees, brought in $365.2 billion in receipts. And women-owned employer businesses generated a further $2.1 trillion in receipts and supported 11.4 million jobs, contributing $508.5 billion annually to their payrolls, as reported by the Census Bureau. These figures reveal women’s economic contribution and leadership.

In the realm of small business—a significant driver of economic growth, job creation, and innovation—women are forging ahead with success. According to Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey data, 84% of women small business owners and decision-makers report current profitability, with even more (88%) marking positive profits over the past three months—the highest reported since April 2023.

Despite reaching new heights when it comes to profitability, women-led small businesses report bringing in an estimated average of $400K in revenue over a 3-month period—compared to $679K for their male counterparts. Nevertheless, women are forging ahead with ambition and innovation. Beyond financial gains, 33% of these entrepreneurs hold a copyright, pending or granted patent, or a trademark and as noted above, 74% are actively pursuing rapid or steady growth.¹

While the successes of women-led businesses are undeniable, these achievements are not guaranteed to continue without difficulty. Looking ahead, 31% of women-led small businesses voice concerns about being able to access the financing they need to sustain their enterprises in the next year.¹ This highlights a critical area where support and adjustments are needed to ensure these drivers of economic vigor continue to thrive.

Navigating the credit tightrope

Navigating the financial tightrope of today's economy is no small feat. With inflation reaching a 40-year peak in mid-2022 and the Federal Reserve counter maneuvering with a swift series of interest rate hikes, many small businesses find themselves in a precarious financial balancing act. As the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report reveals, small businesses that had limited access to credit during these rate hikes saw their revenue and employment growth lag behind.

The report also found that credit card financing helped some small businesses to maintain growth, while others became more reliant on credit cards. Half (55%) of US small businesses reported charging over a quarter of their expenses to credit cards. Overall, small businesses experienced a 14% spike in credit card interest payments in 2024.² 

This environment makes credit cards a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they're a lifeline, helping businesses manage cash flow and unexpected costs. Nearly half (49%) of women-led small businesses reported using a business credit card in the last year, and a third (33%) applied for a new one recently.¹ But over half (52%) carry a balance month-to-month (more than than their male counterparts at 47%), and over a quarter (27%) are becoming more reliant on them.¹

Juggling the necessity of credit with the risks of over-reliance is a constant challenge. The good news? Two in 5 (42%) women-led small businesses report using a credit card for investments in business growth,¹ demonstrating a strategic approach to leveraging credit for their advantage.

Tech savvy success

Women entrepreneurs are making strides in the digital space, driving momentum and strategically adopting new technologies. More than 7 in 10 (77%) women-led small businesses recognize that adopting new tech is critical for their future growth,³ and this isn't just talk. Six in 10 (60%) of these businesses are proactively integrating digital tools early or in lockstep with their peers,¹ demonstrating a real-time commitment to staying ahead of the curve.

This digital agility is paying off. In the US, the most digitally-integrated small businesses are more likely to be women-owned (21%) than male-owned (16%) and overall, they’re 1.9 times more likely to report higher productivity and 1.5 times more likely to see higher revenue.² Demonstrating their tech leadership, 7 in 10 (71%) women-led small businesses are confident they're equipped with the right technology to keep pace with their competitors.³ And with 72% reporting that at least half of their business is online and 41% anticipating an increase in online sales,¹ their shift towards e-commerce is both clear and strategic.

When asked about their most useful digital tools, women-led small businesses report that these tools are helping to improve efficiency (62%), save time (61%), reduce errors (43%), get paid faster (30%), and reduce operating costs (30%), among other benefits.¹

This tech-savvy approach extends to social media, where 61% of women (compared to 49% of men)¹ leverage it to promote products or services (59%), engage with customers (50%), and build brand awareness (42%).³ While women-led small businesses have invested an average estimated $9,000 in new or upgraded tech in the past year, a slight dip to $8,800 is anticipated over the next,³ underscoring the importance of targeted financing support to ensure these tech-savvy businesses can continue their growth trajectory.

The AI edge

This embrace of technology isn't limited to the basics. Women entrepreneurs are also at the forefront of adopting cutting-edge tools like AI. Two in 5 (42%) women-led small businesses report using AI at least weekly.¹ They also recognize its potential to improve operations: 53% say AI has already boosted their productivity.¹

This focus on productivity aligns with the broader benefits of digital adoption, where digitally integrated businesses are more likely to report higher productivity. With 50% of women-led small businesses reporting an increase in overall productivity compared to just three months ago,¹ it's clear that embracing AI isn't just about adding another app to their digital toolkit—it's about achieving tangible, measurable efficiency gains that can pave the way for success.

Methodology

1. Small Business Insights Survey: Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Insights is an international, quarterly survey of small business health, opinions, and priorities commissioned by Intuit QuickBooks every three months since its launch in September 2021. Insights for the Women’s History Month data report come from the November 2024 US wave with a total of 1,357 respondents (630 women and 700 men). All respondents are over the age of 18. Participants are small business owners and decision-makers from two sources: (1) Dynata panel: on average, more than 50% of the respondents are small business owners. The remainder are senior decision-makers within small businesses who have a detailed knowledge of their employer's financial performance, workforce strategy, and business priorities. For each wave of the survey, 50% of the sample are repeat respondents who have previously taken the survey to allow opinions and business health to be tracked more effectively over time. Respondents receive remuneration. All responses are anonymous. In the US, all respondents are from small businesses with 0 to 100 employees. very effort is made to make these samples as representative as possible of small businesses in each country but as with all online surveys, there are limitations. To give the largest possible sample size for each wave of the survey, responses from the Dynata panel are combined with responses from the QuickBooks customer panel, described below, whenever possible. (2) Intuit QuickBooks customer panel: The number of survey participants drawn from the Intuit QuickBooks customer base varies over time. Respondents are drawn from a pool of QuickBooks Online subscribers in the US, Canada, and the UK who have been active in their accounts in the past 30 days. As with the Dynata audience panel described above, respondents in the US are typically from small businesses with 0 to 100 employees.

2. 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report: How higher interest rates have affected small businesses this year: Figures 52, 53 in this section (credit card usage, credit card payments and interest, and the distribution of average interest payments) plot

average values of credit card usage, payments and interest payments for an average small business in the US with 0 to 100 employees. The analysis is based on a cohort of 249,000 small businesses using the QuickBooks platform consistently between July 2019 and August

2024 and is reweighted by sector and region to make the insights nationally-representative. Figure 54 shows a comparison of 2022 and 2023 interest payments and is based on a cohort of 677,000 small businesses using the QuickBooks platform consistently in 2022 and 2023. In the first step, for each of these firms, we used anonymized data to calculate the total usage and value of payments on all of the credit cards used for business purposes and summed these values up to get a firm-level total. We then used the anonymized transaction descriptions to establish if the firm was charged interest on any of their credit cards and again summed these values up to a firm-level total. In the next step, we took the firm-level totals and aggregated them to sector and regional level cells. To make these nationally-representative, we then reweighted each cell to make the regional and sectoral cross composition of the firms align with the corresponding composition in the US economy. The figures shown in the report plot the averages of these nationally-representative statistics. As these are reweighted nationally-representative plots, they do not reflect the Intuit QuickBooks customer base or Intuit’s business.

3. 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Black History Month Survey: In December 2024, Intuit QuickBooks commissioned an online survey completed in January 2025. The survey gathered insights from 2,490 Black and 3,000 non-Black small business owners and decision-makers aged 18 and over. This included 1,220 Black females and 1,480 non-Black females. 

Reported differences between genders are statistically significant. For clarity, percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number so in some of the stacked column charts shown above, survey responses may not add up to 100% but 99% or 101%, for example, instead. Please also note that all responses to multiple choice questions are shown as a percentage of the total number of respondents, not the total number of responses, to better reflect the number of people who chose each answer option. As a result, in the corresponding grouped column charts shown above, the sum of the percentages will always be greater than 100.

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