Women in business and social media: state of the art and research agenda

Purpose – Web-based technologies and digital culture have become an important part of our daily activities and this topic is at the top in the agenda of many researchers and policy makers. In particular social media can make possible new ways of working and doing business, based on innovative concepts such as sharing, collaboration and co-creation. Some authors especially underlines how social media can open up new opportunities for women entrepreneurs and encourage the creation of new businesses run by women, thanks to their flexibility and to their features. However, this is a little-known model, with still unknown implications on management and organization. For this reason it’s important to understand how social media can really facilitate, promote, and support women entrepreneurs, and if the latter are able to take full advantage of them. In this context, the aim of this paper is to carry out a literature review in order to know the state-of-the-art and to understand whether and what extent the studies conducted so far have addressed these issues: How and why women entrepreneurs and managers are using social media? Do they use social media for marketing, networking, or professional reasons? What their communication flows incoming and outgoing are like? What are the main benefits they get using social media? What are the main obstacles? Design/methodology/approach –The article relies on a literature review about women entrepreneurs/mangers and social media. For this purpose a literature searches on Scopus has been conducted, using a set of selected keywords. Scopus has been used as it allows us to be confident on the quality of publications. Selected papers have been analyzed and classified them, in an attempt to identify main topics and results obtained thanks to research and analysis carried out so far. Originality/value – This paper contributes to expand the literature on gender studies and it offers a new perspective applied to a topic of high relevance as social media. Our literature review puts in evidence that this is a new issue, which gives us the possibility to identify new trends and future directions for research. Practical implications – The major implication is to advance knowledge and practice in the area of gender in management and use of social media by focusing upon empirical research, theoretical developments, practice and current issues. The outcomes of the application are related to a better understanding of the debate on “Gender and Management” themes by reconsidering communication and networking activities through the use of social media.