Key points
- Women opened more than 153,000 new private entrepreneurs, in the first ten months of 2025.
- Women account for 61% of new entrepreneurs.
- The number of female entrepreneurs in Ukraine has grown to 1.1 million.
- EXPO 2025 in Kyiv became the largest national event for women’s business.
- The event brought together entrepreneurs, businesses, international organisations and financial institutions.
Women remain a key driving force behind small business in Ukraine. In the first ten months of 2025, they registered more than 153,000 new individual entrepreneurs, accounting for 61% of all new private entrepreneurs. Over five years, the number of women in business has grown by 22.5% to reach around 1.1 million.
Experts attribute this trend to the full-scale war, economic instability, and the need for financial independence. For many Ukrainian women, starting their own business has become a way to maintain their income, create jobs for themselves, and employ other people, especially in the context of a shrinking traditional labour market.
UN Women supports the development of women’s entrepreneurship in Ukraine by implementing training, mentoring and business scaling programmes. Despite the growing number of women entrepreneurs, they continue to face limited access to finance, investment, markets and professional networks.
One response to these challenges was the Women’s Entrepreneurship EXPO, a partnership platform aimed at developing the ecosystem of women’s business in Europe and Central Asia. In 2025, Ukraine hosted the largest national EXPO in the history of the event. The event brought together about 200 participants, including 100 women entrepreneurs, half of whom presented their products at the fair in Kyiv.
EXPO also became a platform for cooperation between businesses, accelerators, international and public organisations. As part of the event, the WEPs Award was presented for the first time in Ukraine — an award for companies’ contribution to promoting gender equality and the principles of empowering women in business.
The exhibition was organized by the UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Business Angels Network, and Women in Tech Global. The event in Ukraine was held with financial support from France and Sweden.
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