Digital Market Access and Women’s Economic Agency in Pakistan: A Social Science Review of Gendered Constraints and Entrepreneurship Pathways

Women’s entrepreneurship in Pakistan is shaped by intersecting social, institutional, and economic constraints, including gender norms, household bargaining structures, mobility restrictions, limited access to finance, unequal digital access, and low participation in formal labor markets. As digital platforms, mobile payments, social commerce, and online marketplaces expand across emerging economies, they create new opportunities for women’s enterprise participation while also reproducing existing inequalities in skills, visibility, trust, and institutional support. This paper reviews social-science literature on women’s economic agency, entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, and gendered labor-market barriers, using Pakistan as a country case. Rather than treating digital market access only as a business-growth opportunity, the paper examines how digital access interacts with social norms, family expectations, market institutions, and women’s ability to exercise economic choice. The paper proposes a conceptual framework linking five dimensions of women’s enterprise participation: digital capability, financial inclusion, market access, social legitimacy, and institutional trust. It argues that women-led enterprise development in Pakistan requires attention not only to platforms and markets but also to the social conditions that shape women’s agency, mobility, and legitimacy as economic actors.