The business minister, Baroness Shriti Vadera, has launched a fund designed to encourage women entrepreneurs at the Everywoman conference in London.

The Aspire fund will be backed by £25m, supplied equally by the government and private sector investment.

In order to avoid discrimination laws being breached the Department for Business will allow male owned companies to apply for funding of between £100,000 and £2m.

However, as part of the criteria male owned companies will have to invest in businesses where women hold at least 30% of the shares.

“There are 20% more people in enterprise in the US than in Britain and the majority of that gap is made up of women. Getting more women entrepreneurs is an economic issue, not just an equality one,” said Shriti Vadera.

“If we matched the US levels of women’s enterprise there would be 900,000 new UK businesses.”