Kate Johnston

A Road to Empowerment Kate Johnston

Women's entrepreneurship is on the rise globally. In the past few years, 163 million women were starting businesses across 74 economies worldwide, while 111 million were running established businesses, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2016/2017 Women's Report (GEM, 2017). Numerous studies throughout the world have consistently demonstrated the positive effect of women entrepreneurs on economic growth, job creation as well as social benefits, particularly in developing economies (Cuberes and Teignier, 2015; Fetsch et al., 2015; Lewis et al., 2014; Hailemariam et al., 2019). A point in case is China, China has one of the largest populations in the world, with a population of 1.4 billion and of which 48.7 per cent is accounted by women (worldbank.org, 2019). Until recently, female entrepreneurs were mostly unheard of in China's business environment largely due to cultural barriers and the dominant male-focused society, as noted by Lai (2017). However, the rise of online and social media platforms (WeChat and Weibo) is offering huge potential with minimum cost and is offering huge potential to empower Chinese female entrepreneurs globally. Using a survey involving 60 female entrepreneurs and four in-depth interviews with female entrepreneurs in mainland China and Hong Kong, the study explores how Chinese women entrepreneurs are using social media platforms and the benefits and motivations behind their use in an emerging market. The research points to evidence that female entrepreneurs are embracing this new marketing channel with new impetus and the research suggest clear gains (through the greater market and customers' access) along with a greater feeling of empowerment. The study also points to certain challenges and disadvantages and highlights the need for supports/training in the social media space.