Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: The Role of Information and Communications Technology Usage and Financial Literacy

Helping women's entrepreneurship is an essential part of promoting common wealth. This paper adopts the data from the China Family Panel Survey 2020, incorporates Information and Communications Technology (ICT) usage, financial literacy and female entrepreneurship into a unified analytical framework, and employs the Probit model and the OLS model to study the effects of ICT usage, financial literacy, and the interaction of the two on female entrepreneurship from the perspectives of whether or not to start a business, the scale of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial income. The results of the study show that, firstly, both ICT usage and financial literacy are key factors affecting women's entrepreneurship, and the effect of ICT usage on women's entrepreneurship is more obvious than that of financial literacy. Second, ICT usage and financial literacy have there are significant substitution effects on whether women start a business, the size of the business, and the income from the business. Third, ICT usage and financial literacy have significant positive effects on rural female entrepreneurship, and insignificant effects on urban female entrepreneurship. Fourth, human capital shows positive moderating effects in the impact of ICT usage and financial literacy on female entrepreneurship. This paper provides a complementary perspective to existing theories in the field of entrepreneurship and provides a theoretical basis for the development of female entrepreneurship policies.