London: High-flying businesswomen who run their own companies earn more than their male counterparts by 17 percent, reversing the gender pay gap in favor of women, a new UK study has found.

While part-time women workers are ahead of part-time men by more than five percent, among full-time workers in their 20s, wages for men are less than half a percentage point ahead of those for women.

Researchers found that female entrepreneurs in UK out-earn their male counterparts by 17 percent, 'Daily Mail' reported.

The sex breakdown of how company owners pay themselves was produced in a study among 2,000 high-earning clients by Barclays Wealth and Investment Management.

It found that women running their own businesses paid themselves 382,000 pounds, a figure 16.8 percent higher than the equivalent of 327,000 pounds for men.

In contrast, women executives working for other people's businesses typically earned 217,000 pounds, some 21 percent lower than the 273,000 pounds earned by men.

The success of female entrepreneurs comes despite their scarcity compared to men among business owners, report said.

Evidence suggests that some of the most driven women executives set up their own businesses because they want to arrange flexible working hours around their families and in other cases high-paid women are reaping rewards for a cautious approach to company debt.

"Women are generally more risk averse, so they don't borrow money and they grow their own businesses at their own pace," Professor Julie Logan of the Cass Business School said.

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"That may mean they expand more slowly but they are better able to cope with a crisis. At the end of the day, if you are not repaying loads of money to a bank and you have slowly built a bigger business, you can pay yourself a larger salary," said Logan.

Recent equal pay statistics published by the Office for National Statistics in UK said that the gender pay gap for all full-time workers dropped last year from 10.5 percent in favor of men to 9.6 percent.

Equal pay figures show that women are paid virtually the same as men until the age of 30, which is also the average age at which a woman has a baby.

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