The Empowering Women Entrepreneurs through Digital Platforms

A Descriptive Qualitative Study on Home-Based Culinary Micro-Businesses in Sleman, Yogyakarta

Abstract

The rapid advancement of digital platforms has emerged as a crucial catalyst for women's economic empowerment, particularly within the competitive home-based food and beverage (F&B) sector in Yogyakarta, an education and tourism hub with active digital consumption. This descriptive qualitative study explores how female culinary micro-entrepreneurs strategically utilize Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and online food delivery applications to reach diverse market segments while identifying the operational challenges they encounter. Using a small-scale case study approach, data were gathered through in-depth interviews with three purposively selected female home-based culinary business owners in Sleman, Yogyakarta, and analyzed thematically. The findings reveal that digital platforms function as a practical equalizer: they reduce entry barriers, enable home-based ventures to compete with larger brands, strengthen household financial independence, and provide space for women's self-actualization beyond traditional domestic roles. However, the study identifies two interrelated categories of challenges. The first is structural, namely dependency on unpredictable platform algorithms, delivery-app commission systems, and intense price wars. The second is psychological and operational, especially the double burden of managing real-time content, customer chats, delivery timing, and daily kitchen work. Theoretically, this study enriches digital entrepreneurship and women's empowerment literature by contextualizing platform-based agency within home-based micro-enterprises. Practically, it proposes digital adaptation strategies and evidence-based recommendations for local stakeholders to design targeted, sustainable digital literacy programs for novice women entrepreneurs.