If you haven’t heard, 2023 has been dubbed the Year of the Girl. Whether you enjoyed summer with the Tomato Girls, celebrated Christmas with a bow, used math for girls to apply economic theory to a recent purchase, or decorated your home in Barbie pink, there was ample evidence that “girl power” is much more than a phrase on Lisa Frank’s notebook—it’s a fun but not at all frivolous phenomenon with enormous purchasing power.
Need to see the numbers to believe it? That’s what a new report from Yelp revealed Searches for women-owned businesses and women-owned business startups have skyrocketed in several categories this past year.
For starters, women opened 17% more businesses in 2023 than in 2022, according to Yelp’s new business listings data, adding nearly half a million women-owned businesses listed on the review site. And, encouragingly, openings spanned all kinds of categories: hotels and travel companies (which saw a 44% year-over-year growth rate), home services (up 38%), education (up 20%), financial services (an increase of 11%) and more.
If you live in Austin; Miami; Washington, DC; Denver; or Orlando, you may have noticed the increase more than others, as those cities saw the largest growth in women-owned businesses this past year. But the report shows that it’s not just business openings that have increased – there’s also been a huge increase in the number of people looking for women-owned shops across the country. Searches for women-owned fashion businesses increased by more than 1,600%, while people searched for women-owned pilates studios 350% more than a year earlier, and searches for women-owned bookstores increased by 74%.
The report also points to some far-reaching effects of women in the economy. Take Taylor Swift, for example: Thanks to her appearance at recent Kansas City Chiefs games, Yelp found that when Taylor started carrying football merchandise, jersey searches and local business in Kansas City skyrocketed.
The rise of BookTok, which highlights many female authors (if you don’t know Colleen Hoover, now you do) and is run by many of the female creators of TikTok, has also brought more interest in everything from female-owned bookstores (searches increased 74% from 2022 to 2023), bookshop cafes and bookstores, according to Yelp data.
Although 2023 is a closed calendar year, even as bows and Barbie pink fade from the style spotlight, it’s clear that the “year of the girl” is nowhere near the rearview mirror. “We expect to see more of these women-owned businesses opening up, especially in the home services industry and to keep an eye on the professional organization industry,” predicts Tara Lewis, Yelp Trend Expert. “Based on our recent trend predictions in Yelp’s 2024 Home & Living Trends Report alone, we’ve seen searches for professional decorators grow 182%, and we expect that to continue this year.”
As hopeful as these predictions are, it only takes a quick glance at the current pay gap to see that gender equality still has a long way to go. According to Forbes, women earn an average of 16% less than men (or 84 cents to the male dollar), while black women are paid only 64% of what non-Hispanic white men are paid.
As cheeky as it is fun to say “I’m just a girl,” it’s important to remember that the self-deprecating phrase implies a power struggle that’s still at play. Looking ahead to 2024, I can’t wait to see the ways women continue to innovate and create new businesses, take care of themselves, follow their passions, develop new design trends, and push the economy in directions that are not to be underestimated at all.