Digital Technologies in the Knowledge Era: Opportunity or Challenge for Female Entrepreneurship?

Throughout history, women have played an active role in entrepreneurship, although their participation has often been invisibilized or restricted by social and legal norms. Today, digitalization and new technologies present significant opportunities to expand women's participation in entrepreneurial activities. However, they can also intensify existing challenges or generate new ones. In this context, it becomes necessary to analyze in depth how digitalization impacts on the specific opportunities and challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. The objective of this paper is to analyze the intersection in research between female entrepreneurship and digitalization. To do so, a comprehensive review of 171 scientific articles published in Web of Science (WoS) between 2010 and 2025 was conducted. The results report the main references in the literature on the nexus between female entrepreneurship and digitization: countries (China, USA, India and the UK), authors (McAdam, Maura from Dublin City University and Kelly, Grainne from Queens University Belfast), papers (Pergelova et al., 2019; McAdam et al., 2020; Ughetto et al., 2020), journals (International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship and Small Business Economics). The co-word analysis allowed us to identify seven main thematic fronts: (1) social networks, (2) financing, (3) Covid-19, (4) competitive advantage and internationalization, (5) entrepreneurship ecosystems, (6) education, and (7) miscellaneous topics. Each of these fronts was characterized in terms of the opportunities and challenges posed by digital transformation for female entrepreneurship1. The results are of interest to researchers concerned with women's entrepreneurship, policy makers charged with fostering gender-responsive entrepreneurship, and women entrepreneurs as they seek to seize the opportunities and circumvent the challenges posed by digital technologies.