CGMA chair Wanga Goldwag expects to see more female-run traders at London wholesale market in future
Chair of the Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) Wanda Goldwag OBE predicts we will see more women owning and running businesses at the wholesale market as gender dynamics continue to change.
Speaking ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Goldwag says there is now a larger female presence at New Covent Garden Market (NCGM), which in 2024 celebrated its 50th anniversary since relocating to Nine Elms.
“It is still rare for a wholesale market business to be solely headed up by a woman, but there are several examples of husband-and-wife partnerships, and plenty of daughters joining the fold, where it used to be mostly sons,” she says.
“The gender dynamics are changing. We will see more women owning and running businesses here.”
Goldwag is clear that NCGM has “traditionally been a male-dominated site since opening in 1974, particularly during the early hours of the morning when the vast majority of the sales teams, warehouse workers and porters have been men”.
However, the male-to-female ratio has “narrowed significantly”, she says, with women “increasingly choosing to come to work here”.
This extends to the CGMA, whose board has more female than male members, including Goldwag as chair.
“A large proportion of the people who work and run businesses around us in the Food Exchange are also women,” she adds.
“The trading floor may retain much of its fabled atmosphere, and a wholesale market is still ostensibly an industrial environment, but undoubtedly some of the harsher edges have smoothed…
“Our job as the market authority is to ensure that we continue to develop and nurture a vibrant and inclusive market, where everyone would like to work, and everyone has an equal opportunity to excel.”
