Women-Led Platform Enterprises and Local Economic Participation

Paul Tracey

Women-Led Platform Enterprises and Local Economic Participation

Author(s)	Prof. Paul Tracey
Country	United States
Abstract	Digital platforms can alter the geographical and organizational boundaries of entrepreneurship by connecting producers, service providers, consumers, suppliers, and complementary actors through digitally mediated marketplaces. For women-led enterprises, such platforms may create pathways toward broader market access, flexible business organization, customer discovery, local supplier integration, and new income opportunities. These possibilities, however, do not arise automatically from digitalization. Limited digital skills, weak networks, restricted access to finance, unequal household responsibilities, connectivity constraints, platform dependence, and inadequate trust mechanisms can restrict participation even where digital infrastructure exists. This study develops a framework for understanding women-led platform enterprises as potential catalysts of local economic participation. The framework integrates research on women's entrepreneurship, digital entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial ecosystems, platform markets, and locally embedded enterprise development. Because no primary enterprise dataset was supplied, a transparent simulation-based explanatory design was used. A synthetic dataset of 340 hypothetical women-led platform-enterprise profiles was generated around five seven-point constructs: women-led platform capability, digital market access, local network activation, platform trust and accessibility, and local economic participation. Simulated analysis produced a strong positive relationship between platform capability and local economic participation (r = 0.724). Digital market access (r = 0.611), platform trust and accessibility (r = 0.587), and local network activation (r = 0.522) were also positively associated with the outcome. A multivariate model containing the four predictors explained approximately 63.6% of the simulated variation in local economic participation. Mean participation increased from 3.49 among very-low-platform-maturity profiles to 5.70 among very-high-maturity profiles. These values are synthetic and are not presented as field evidence. The study argues that the local-development contribution of women-led platform enterprises depends not merely on bringing existing businesses online but on whether platform architectures enable women entrepreneurs to enlarge demand, activate local suppliers and workers, reduce participation frictions, and retain sufficient economic value within their communities.
Keywords	women entrepreneurs, digital platforms, platform enterprises, local economic participation, digital entrepreneurship, market access, entrepreneurial ecosystems, economic inclusion
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 5, Issue 2, March-April 2024
Published On	2024-04-17

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

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Women-Led Platform Enterprises and Local Economic Participation

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