Empowering Women for Technology Entrepreneurship: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This paper aims to underline how the new emerging digital technologies could empower women entrepreneurship by supporting them in overcoming the constraints they face as well as in creating a more favorable network environment. We will do this by analyzing the state of the art of the research regarding entrepreneurship practices by women considering the literature that has focused on this theme up to now. Methodology - A structured literature review methodology is going to be applied to this paper. Through the use of specific keywords, we analyzed Scopus documents published up to now on the theme related to Women and technology entrepreneurship. Several steps have been followed to perform a systematic, transparent, and replicable study. We used the VOSviewer tool for bibliographic and cluster analysis. A final content analysis was performed to identify research areas. Findings - Specifically the contribution and the impact provided by the Digital Technologies is analyzed for women's entrepreneurship. A conceptual discussion on how the Digital Technologies opportunities in overcoming some of the constrains women tackle in their entrepreneurship process and which are the main research streams that emerge for future investigation on the theme, is provided. Practical implications – The major implication is to advance knowledge and practice in the area of gender in management and use of Digital Technologies by focusing upon empirical research, theoretical developments, practice and current issues. Benefits are related to a better understanding of the debate on “Gender and Management” themes by reconsidering networking activities with social media.