Despite the temporary adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital economy bodes well for the enhancement and empowerment of women’s entrepreneurship and employment in the long run.

New forms of entrepreneurship and employment are emerging alongside technological innovation in the digital economy, creating new business opportunities for women. According to the newest report released by Aliresearch from Alibaba Group, the total number of women’s entrepreneurship and employment has exceeded 57 million in the digitial economy.

Sluggish market activity, logistics delays and the frequent occurrence of home quarantines because of the pandemic have caused lots of difficulties for women-owned businesses, which are mainly seen in the following two areas:

First, the vitality of women’s employment and businesses declined. In the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2021, 90 percent of women who lost jobs during COVID-19 did not return to work and 64 percent of women-led firms have been strongly impacted by the pandemic.

Second, the success rate of female entrepreneurship and employment has declined during the pandemic. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2020 report, carried out by Sebrae and the Brazilian Institute of Quality and Productivity, showed that the percentage of women entrepreneurs declined from 50 percent in 2019 to 45.9 percent in 2020, with the success rate down from 16.2 percent to 8.7 percent, the sharpest drop in 17 years.

Despite the pandemic’s adverse effects on women entrepreneurship and employment, women remain important drivers of economic development in the digital era, including in China.

China's digital economy grew to 39.2 trillion yuan ($6.2 trillion) in 2020, accounting for 38.6 percent of the country's total GDP and the share is continuously rising. The growth of digital economy and technologies will keep offering opportunities for women entrepreneurship and employment.

More importantly, women have special advantages in the digital economy. For instance, The digital economy is characterized by “customized and personalized products and services”, which require great business agility as well as keen insight into and accurate predictions of user demand.

In this regard, women are deemed as naturally having deeper user experience. They are more sensitive at detecting user demand and are capable of rapidly responding to market demand changes. This has given them an opportunity to play to their strengths in the digital age, find a suitable area to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, and grow with the digital economy.

However, we need to face the fact that there’s still digital gender divide, which will restrict the development potential of the women entrepreneurship and employment in the post-pandemic digital era.

Data from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in 2019 showed that women and girls account for half of the world’s population, yet 250 million fewer women than men are online.

Therefore bridging the digital gender divide and further empowering women would help the sustainable growth and prosperity of women’s entrepreneurship and employment in the post-pandemic.

First, strengthen women's ability to acquire and employ technologies. Compared with men, women have less access to the high skilled jobs and often earn lower wages. More developed training systems aimed at promoting women's entry into the labor market should be established to endow them with digital skills and lifelong learning opportunities.

At the same time, by improving women's participation and graduation rate in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses, women can master more scientific skills to better start a business or obtain better workplace performance.

Second, strengthen women's leadership in business area and promote financial equality. Research shows that globally, women account for about 17 percent of corporate board seats. Having more women on the corporate boards of banks and venture capital firms will help to mobilize funding and resources for women entrepreneurs. Enhancing financial equality for women is another important way to empower woman entrepreneurship and employment, including designing appropriate and affordable financial products for woman entrepreneurs and encouraging banks to provide the first loss guarantee to them.

In the post pandemic era, the pandemic-induced rising costs in raw materials and human resources, business owners will have less cost burden in asset-light sectors of the digital economy. Reduced face-to-face contact amid the pandemic may create new entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.

Women should be very cautious about the sector and project that they choose to enter and closely follow the new business models that are boosted by the pandemic and choose suitable entrepreneurial projects from them.

The author is an associate professor at China Women's University of the All-China Women's Federation. 

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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