Why do female-founded agencies remain the exception?
Opinion – The Indie Leader – AMI
If we are serious about supporting women’s careers, we must stop designing workplace systems that assume caregiving falls on mothers. Equal, enhanced parental leave, regardless of gender, should be the baseline, says Piqniq’s founding partner.
As I put on make-up for the first time in months and swap a bag of bottles and nappies for my laptop and notepad, I realise how excited I am for my first day back at work.
My son, Indigo, was born on 28 July, and I’ve spent the last four months on maternity leave getting to know him. I love my son. The last four months have been extraordinary. But I also love my work – the majority female-owned media agency Piqniq I co-founded just 18 months ago.
I love our rapidly growing team, the brands we partner with and the campaigns that challenge and excite me. And, practically speaking, I love that it keeps a roof over my head.
Yet whenever I say I’m returning to work when my son is just four months old, I’m met with surprise and the same question: “But who will look after the baby?” It’s an important question – but a very revealing one.
When couples look at rent or mortgage payments, both incomes matter, and both careers count. But when a baby arrives, we suddenly revert to a far older assumption: that caregiving will naturally sit with the mother.
Logistical difficulties
The early months of a child’s life demand intense care. For this reason, many nurseries won’t accept babies under six months old, and parents often feel the first year requires full-time parental attention.
Many businesses now offer enhanced maternity leave to support this need. My husband’s company, for example, offered five months of full pay to its female colleagues but only two weeks of paid parental leave to its male employees. This common trend of negligible paternity leave isn’t accidental. It reflects a deeper assumption about who is expected to do the caring.
While these policies are often framed as supporting mothers, they often have the opposite effect. They limit women, constrain family choice, and quietly reinforce the idea that caregiving is not a shared responsibility.
Career-defining factors
This isn’t just a workplace issue; it’s a social one. Caregiving is still culturally assumed to be the province of mothers.
As my female peers approached their child-rearing years, conversations about maternity pay, duration and flexibility became career-defining. They influenced whether women took roles, stayed put, or moved on.
By contrast, I cannot recall male colleagues or friends ever worrying aloud about their paternity leave, what a lack of support might mean for their partner, or how care would be shared.
This is a stark difference, and one that can easily set the course for a very different career trajectory for women.
Barriers to entry
When I co-founded Piqniq – a majority female-owned and founded media agency – I was reviewing Campaign’s Top Agency Reports and realised something striking: there were no majority female-owned independent media agencies listed.
In an industry overflowing with exceptional female talent, that statistic demands scrutiny. And much of the answer points back to childcare.
Most entrepreneurs start businesses in their late twenties and early thirties, with an average founding age of 32 – exactly when childcare costs and parental leave policies matter most.
Women repeatedly cite family care as a barrier to starting or scaling a business, which, given the typical age at founding, helps explain why they are about a third less likely than men to start one.
For women, the gap persists not because of a lack of ambition or capability, but because systems still assume they will absorb the majority of care.
The gender pay gap
This imbalance fuels the gender pay gap. Our industry’s gender pay gap sits at around 15%, above the national average. Much of this emerges around the point at which women have children. In fact, the so-called “motherhood penalty” accounts for the vast majority of the gender pay gap in the UK.
Until caregiving is genuinely shared, pay equality will remain out of reach.
Internationally, there are better examples. Countries like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark offer parental leave with significant portions reserved for both parents, while operating systems require fathers to take extended leave.
These policies don’t just support families – they reduce the career and financial risk of entrepreneurship and leadership for women by normalising shared care.
The UK lags behind.
While Scandinavian-style reform may feel ambitious in the short term, UK businesses do not need to wait for government policy to change.
A better way
If we are serious about supporting women’s careers, leadership, and entrepreneurship, we must stop designing workplace systems that assume caregiving falls on mothers. Equal, enhanced parental leave – regardless of gender – should be the baseline.
As a business owner myself, I appreciate that the desire to support employees is likely constrained by financial realities. However, it’s worth asking why more businesses don’t rebalance existing benefits, spreading parental support between both parents rather than focusing on women alone.
A single parental leave policy, available equally to either parent, would give families genuine choice at a critical stage of life.
At Piqniq, being boldly progressive is a core part of our personality. Therefore, from the outset, we have offered the same enhanced maternity policies for paternity leave as well.
But policy alone isn’t enough. Men must be encouraged to take paternity leave, without stigma or career penalty. Leaders must model it. Teams must normalise it.
When caregiving is genuinely shared, women gain real choice – not just the illusion of it. Only then will female-founded agencies like Piqniq feel inevitable rather than exceptional.
Only then will a mother returning to work after four months stop prompting concern about who is caring for her child and instead reflect what it should always have been: a shared responsibility, equally valued.
Piqniq’s shortlisting as Campaign’s Start-Up Agency of the Year feels like a meaningful step in that direction and, we hope, one that brings Campaign’s Top Agency Reports closer to listing a majority female-led agency.
Bee Pearson is the founding partner at Piqniq. AMI members write regularly for The Media Leader in 2026 as part of our new Indie Leader series.