How digital platforms can boost women’s entrepreneurship

Social media can be important tools for business development and empowerment for women in the Global South. This is shown in a new doctoral thesis at Stockholm University.

Empowerment through entrepreneurship, where social media is an important tool, is at the center of Thilini De Silva’s thesis.

– In Sri Lanka, just over half of the population are women, but their participation in the economy is limited. It is still a patriarchal society where structural barriers and social norms limit women’s entrepreneurial potential.

She began by studying women running beauty salons in Sri Lanka to see how they used social media in their business.

– For many of the women who ran beauty salons, using Facebook was a clear breakthrough. Before social media, they had to advertise in newspapers or on the radio, which was expensive and often inefficient. Now they could reach customers across the country and their businesses grew.

– As the women used social media to develop their businesses, their financial independence and self-confidence also increased.

Inspire and learn from others

As part of her research, Thilini De Silva also conducted workshops with women entrepreneurs. It became apparent that the participants lacked opportunities to meet other women entrepreneurs. The participants therefore started a WhatsApp group where they continued to share experiences and tips after the workshop.

This, combined with the interviews conducted by Thilini De Silva during the initial studies, made her realize that social media were not sufficient as digital tools in the entrepreneurs’ quest for empowerment.

– A complete digital ecosystem was needed to help realize women’s entrepreneurial ambitions and contribute to increased empowerment.

Based on this insight, a prototype app “Empower Her” was created. It includes features for networking, learning, marketing, customer management and financial planning. The app was developed based on ideas from women in her research and later in close collaboration with around 30 women entrepreneurs who helped evaluate the user effectiveness of the prototype.

– In this work, the entrepreneurs highlighted the importance of learning from the experiences of others and being inspired by what they had done. At the same time, several of them wanted us to include a feature that would allow them to financially support various local development projects. They wanted to give back to the surrounding community,” says Thilini De Silva.

Advice to boost women’s entrepreneurship

According to Thilini De Silva, her research is most useful for the development of women’s entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka, but also in other countries in the Global South.

Some of her advice to politicians, authorities and organizations that want to promote the development of women’s entrepreneurship:

• Create and build ecosystems with persistence, not just courses. When women are given the right tools, the right networks and the opportunity to use digital technologies more widely in business, it becomes a path to real empowerment.

• Include the women who will use the tools in the development and ensure that users can afford to use them.

• Develop cybersecurity to protect women from cyberbullying, abuse and sexual harassment.

More about the thesis
Thilini De Siliva will defend her thesis on February 5, 2026. She is a PhD student at the Department of Computer and Systems Science (DSV) at Stockholm University. She is also the Dean of the Faculty of Business at NSBM Green University in Sri Lanka.

Title of the thesis: “Beauty, Business and Belonging: Understanding Women’s Empowerment through Entrepreneurship and Social Media”