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Unlocking the “SHERO” within: an exploration of how female entrepreneurs in the Caribbean use digital technologies for business transformation

Beverly Best, Paul Lassalle, Katerina Nicolopoulou

International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

ISSN: 1756-6266

Article publication date: 19 December 2024

89

Abstract

Purpose

We aim to explore the role of digital technologies for enhanced sustainability, hope, empowerment, resilience and optimism (SHERO) among female entrepreneurs in the Caribbean and the importance of embeddedness and contextualisation as a premise for integrating gender as a socially constructed situational practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The study presents qualitative data results of semi-structured interviews with 30 female digital entrepreneurs who own and operate their businesses in a range of sectors in three national contexts in the Caribbean. Narratives of the participants were used to develop the themes that emerged from the interviews.

Findings

The Caribbean context is an overarching factor that influences every facet of the lived experiences of female digital entrepreneurs. From the different contextual dimensions, we gained insights into the nuances and paradoxes of dominant assumptions related to how digital technologies influence the business transformation of female entrepreneurship as it relates to sustainability, hope, empowerment, resilience and optimism. Through a contextual gendered lens, these five business areas are found to be overlapping and mutually reinforcing features of the lived experiences of female digital entrepreneurs.

Originality/value

The Caribbean region, comprising of small island developing states, epitomises a unique spatially fragmented entrepreneurial context described as islandness which also offers a “fresh” context within the Global South that captures the novelty and heterogeneity of female entrepreneurs in the digital space.

Keywords

Citation

Best, B., Lassalle, P. and Nicolopoulou, K. (2024), "Unlocking the “SHERO” within: an exploration of how female entrepreneurs in the Caribbean use digital technologies for business transformation", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-03-2024-0093

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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