Technological engagement of women entrepreneurs on online digital platforms: Evidence from the Apple iOS App Store

Abstract

Digital platforms have grown rapidly, serving as a birthplace for entrepreneurship. Women entrepreneurs have increasingly joined digital platforms as complementors who provide products and services to the platform, especially given the fact that digital platforms present low technological barriers to entry. However, little is known about how women entrepreneurs engage with technologies within the context of digital platforms. Our paper addresses this gap by examining women complementors' technological engagement on online digital platforms. We find that female complementors equal their male counterparts in technological engagement in domains where success can be achieved with platform-wide offerings. However, female complementors under-perform in domains that require advanced technological skills which are not widely accessible on the platform. We find that this gender gap varies depending on the offline environments in which women complementors are embedded. This paper sheds fresh light on the inner workings of digital platform ecosystems by integrating the literature on gender gaps in technology with research on platforms.