Female entrepreneurship in the Caribbean: transformative prospects through digital technologies

This study examines how digital technologies influence the transformation of female entrepreneurship in the Caribbean and contribute to more inclusive and resilient societies. By acknowledging the “dark side” of digital technologies, the study develops a conceptual framework that draws on contextual gendered lens to broaden the scholarship on female digital entrepreneurship in developing countries. Adopting an interpretative approach and using qualitative methods, the study is informed by semi-structured interviews of 30 Caribbean female digital entrepreneurs. Using a context-focussed approach for the converging interplay between digital technologies and female entrepreneurship, the study builds on the Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory (TACT) and post-modernist feminist theory. The study revealed that the way in which digital technologies impact gender imbalance in female entrepreneurship within the paradoxical gendered boundaries of Caribbean patriarchal ideology, lends itself to cultivating openings for highlighting critical sensitivities and assumptions of a digital economy that is interlinked to the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. The research contributes to the literature on the impact of digital technologies on female entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial “othering” debate by theoretically elaborating and empirically validating how women entrepreneurs develop resilience capacity in their embedded contexts. The novel insights gleaned can revolutionise “gate keeping” in entrepreneurial education.