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This thesis investigates the experiences of women digital entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom from an intersectional cyberfeminist perspective. Informed by feminist theories of technology and critical entrepreneurship scholarship, it challenges mainstream discourse on digital entrepreneurship with the argument that, similar to traditional (offline) entrepreneurship, online or digital entrepreneurship is deeply embedded in the social world. It draws upon intersectional feminist theory that conceptualises the social world as composed of intersecting hierarchies of race, class, and gender, in which individuals and groups are positioned in dynamic yet durable ways, and by which they are affected simultaneously. This positionality is found to be tied to unequal resource distribution, and for this reason, holds important implications when mapped to extant entrepreneurship theory. The thesis also provides interdisciplinary evidence for the continued coding of Internet technology as predominantly white and male, and for the online environment itself as a stratified and unequal space, countering public discourse that portrays it as a neutral and meritocratic 'great equaliser'.

Research investigating women-owned businesses has developed considerably over the past two decades. There are, however, few British studies that have specifically focussed on growth oriented women-owned businesses. The current study aims to fill this gap. Its purpose is to explore the effect of social capital and human capital on the growth of women-owned enterprises in the UK. The research contributes to the knowledge of women's entrepreneurship as the first to study the moderating role of human capital in building and using social capital in the UK. It develops the theoretical premise that women entrepreneurs with higher human capital gain credibility and centrality in networks, accumulating social capital based on their importance for other network members and their business stakeholders. This mixed method study involves both collecting and analysing quantitative and qualitative data. Statistical analysis using SPSS was applied to analyse quantitative data collected through 517 on-line completed questionnaires from three different regions. The qualitative data collected through face to face interviews with 42 women entrepreneurs were also analysed and interpreted. The findings suggest that the social capital possessed by women entrepreneurs plays an important role in the growth of enterprises. Women entrepreneurs use different sources to build and use their social capital at different stages of growth and in different industry sectors such as manufacturing or services. Women entrepreneurs with higher human capital are more likely to identify opportunities, generate ideas and show creative thinking in introducing novel products, services, location, processes or systems, which makes their growth path exponential. There are implications of this study for women entrepreneurs to build and use their social and human capital for the growth of their enterprises. And there are also implications for politicians and business organisations, who must devise policies to develop opportunities for existing or potential women entrepreneurs for building their human based capital.

This doctoral thesis uses female entrepreneurship as a case study to highlight the flaws and limitations of using gender as a lens to view the social and economic opportunities available to women in nineteenth-century England. Through analysing trade directory data, and reconstructing the lives of a hundred businesswomen using sources including census returns,newspapers, photographs, probate records and advertisements, this thesis demonstrates that female entrepreneurs did not conform to a historiography that would see them solely employed in ‘feminine’ trade types or in ‘feminine’ ways of trading. Rather, women remained an integral part of the urban economy across England throughout the nineteenth-century with a consistent percentage of female owned firms engaged in making products. Analysis of the hundred case studies reveals that women were able to become business owners through a variety of means and they remained the senior partner in family firms until they chose to retire or died. This thesis also shows how women could use their position as business owners to acquire the luxury possessions and display the investment and asset distribution behaviours that men used to secure their middle class status, thus demonstrating that economically independent women could achieve and maintain middle-class status.