WOMEN are being taken less seriously than men when they seek funding for new businesses, it is feared.

Women are half as likely as men to start their own enterprises, the government says.

It says women face unfair obstacles when starting businesses, and has commissioned a review from senior RBS boss Alison Rose.

Dorchester’s Gill Donnell, founder of the Successful Women in Business Network and chair of the Dorset branch of the Institute of Directors (IoD) said: “Whilst the research still tells us that men are more likely to start down the entrepreneurial journey, the numbers of women now setting up their businesses has increased significantly in the last 10 years.

“My experience, particularly with members of our network, is that more and more women are leaving corporate life to start their own businesses, as this has the potential to give them much greater flexibility to balance the demands of work and family responsibilities.

“A significant issue is still that many female business owners say that they are not taken as seriously by investors and banks when attempting to secure funding for start-ups as their male counterparts might be.”

Erin Thomas-Wong, who runs the online community Making Mumpreneurs, said the UK now had 594,000 “mumpreneurs” – women who started businesses after having children.

“I think maybe women who have had children, and have been in the situation where they can’t return to their previous careers because of inflexible working hours and the costs of child care, have this extra motivation to start working for themselves.”

Ms Thomas-Wong, who has 8,000 followers and almost 100 subscribers to a membership “cocoon”, said she had not heard complaints of discrimination.

“I guess the situation in my community is that they are often lean start-ups, working on a shoestring budget and building up their businesses slowly, so they aren’t necessarily looking for outside investment,” she added.

Natalia DaCosta, Dorset-based regional director of the Athena Network – a club for female executives and entrepreneurs – had not seen women being put off starting businesses, but had noticed “sub-conscious discrimination”.

“I run a business centred towards women in business and am ridiculed – sometimes nicely, sometimes not – by both males and females as to why,” she said.

“But we set up so that we can support and inspire each other, in a world where we have to adapt, fit in, work harder and play harder. And what is even more crazy is that as the mother of two young girls, who are not ‘typical’ from a marketing point of view, we battle the reinforcement of stereotypes in everyday simple tasks.”