More women than ever in the UK are choosing to work for themselves, according to new data released this week, and they are not all thinking big. Actually, a lot of women chose lifestyle businesses, which are harder to monetize in crisis. These are the Top 10 female start-ups:

Simply Business has seen a 12 percent increase in insurance quote requests from women starting up businesses over the past 12 months, with women now accounting for 37 percent of all start-up businesses, up from 33 percent last year.

The Top 10 is based on over 117,000 start-up business quote requests received so far in 2011, of which 42,928 were for business start-ups owned by women, up from 34,116 at the same time in 2010.

Lifestyle Services

As you can see many female start-up businesses are lifestyle - mostly small- creative and service based industries; with cleaners, beauticians, hairdressers and caterers dominating the top ten.

Financial Services

Accountancy and financial advisory is the tenth most popular female start-up business and there has been a 16 per cent rise in self-employed female lawyers over the past year. This however could also be due to female lawyers being made redundant by the big law firms.

Market Traders of Local Produce

Female entrepreneurs  are eager to start in emerging lifestyle trends. There has been a 95 percent increase in women starting up as market traders since 2009, as they embrace the recent popularity for local market produce. . Similarly, pet-minding and cake-making have also both grown dramatically over the past year, as has complementary therapy, with a 15 percent rise.

There has also been a sharp rise in the number of women setting up shop in the traditionally public sector spheres of education and health; with female start-up education consultants up by 61 percent and independent nursing businesses by 46 percent.