Social media, digital commerce and women’s economic participation in Jaipur: Empowerment versus vulnerability

Prachi Sharma1*, Dr. Deepshikha Parashar2

Research Scholar, Department of Political Science, The IIS (Deemed to be University) University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

2 Sr. Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, The IIS (Deemed to be University) University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Abstract: Social media and digital commerce offer women new ways to earn, reach customers and develop a public business identity. In Jaipur, these possibilities intersect with craft production, neighbourhood services and enterprises operated from home. However, the ability to advertise online does not necessarily establish economic independence. Earnings may remain insecure, household responsibilities may intensify, and the visibility needed to attract customers may expose sellers to harassment or fraud. This article examines the conditions under which digitally mediated participation can expand women’s choices and the circumstances in which it can reproduce disadvantage. It adopts a qualitative, secondary-source approach, drawing on scholarship on empowerment and intersectionality, official Indian surveys, international reports and Rajasthan policy documents. National statistics are used as contextual evidence rather than estimates of Jaipur’s women entrepreneurs. The analysis distinguishes access to technology, participation in transactions and control over economic outcomes. It considers customer acquisition, payments, pricing, platform dependence, unpaid work, online safety and institutional support. The central argument is that empowerment and vulnerability may develop together within the same enterprise. Digital commerce becomes more empowering when women retain control over accounts and income, receive fair returns for their labour, obtain practical support and can challenge abusive or arbitrary treatment. For Jaipur, the article proposes locally accessible business assistance, shared services, safer platform practices and evaluation based on income quality and agency. Future research should follow women who continue, discontinue or never enter digital commerce, allowing policy to address exclusion as well as visible success.

Keywords: Social Media, Digital Commerce, Women’s Economic Participation, Jaipur, Empowerment, Platform Dependence, Digital Inclusion, Online Safety

INTRODUCTION

A woman selling through social media does more than place a product photograph online. She answers enquiries, explains prices, negotiates delivery, verifies payments and manages the expectations of people she may never meet. When the business operates from home, these tasks can overlap with cooking, childcare and other household responsibilities. A new sales channel may widen her opportunities, but it can also create work that customers, relatives and programme evaluations fail to recognize. Understanding women’s participation therefore requires attention to the whole transaction and the conditions surrounding it.

Jaipur provides a useful setting for this inquiry because digital selling can connect locally rooted goods and services with customers beyond an immediate neighbourhood. Rajasthan’s official livelihood material identifies Sanganeri block prints, Bagru printing and Jaipur blue pottery among its distinctive products (Rajasthan Grameen Aajeevika Vikas Parishad [RGAVP], n.d.). These products suggest opportunities for digitally mediated market access. They do not establish how many women own enterprises, manage sales or retain the resulting income. The distinction is essential: a woman may produce an item while someone else controls the customer relationship and receives the commercial recognition.

This article uses digital commerce broadly to include commercial activities supported by electronic communication, online ordering and digital payment. Social commerce is a related arrangement in which interpersonal networks, messages and shared content help initiate or complete a transaction. A seller may use a social media account to attract customers, a messaging application to confirm specifications and a payment service to receive money. The business need not have a dedicated website. This combination makes participation accessible to small enterprises while spreading responsibilities across systems with different rules and complaint processes.

Economic participation means engagement in income-generating activity; empowerment concerns the choices and authority that activity makes possible. Kabeer’s (1999) distinction among resources, agency and achievements helps explain why the two cannot be treated as equivalent. A smartphone is a resource, setting a price involves agency, and a sustained improvement in financial security is an achievement. These dimensions may develop unevenly. Higher sales can coexist with reduced rest, dependence on a relative’s account or an inability to refuse an unreasonable customer. Counting transactions alone leaves these relationships unexplained.

The discussion is a critical review rather than a report of original fieldwork. It combines selected academic concepts with official surveys, international institutional reports and Rajasthan documents. No interviews, respondent percentages or local income estimates are invented. References to possible business situations are analytical illustrations. Their purpose is to explain mechanisms that subsequent research can investigate. The article asks how online activity can reduce barriers, which risks accompany entry and growth, and what support would make commercial opportunities more usable for women in Jaipur.

The main argument is that empowerment depends on control, security and meaningful alternatives. A woman should be able to decide how her enterprise operates, understand its costs and retain a fair share of its returns. She should also be able to pause work, reject harassment and seek help without losing her entire livelihood. Digital tools may support these conditions, but their presence does not guarantee them. An adequate policy response must therefore consider the household, the business and the platform together, rather than locating every difficulty in the seller’s supposed lack of confidence.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Women’s economic participation in Jaipur must be situated within the longer relationship between household production, urban markets and access to commercial authority. Work performed within families has often contributed to saleable goods without making every contributor visible as an entrepreneur. Preparing materials, finishing products, maintaining relationships and supporting production can remain outside the public account of a business. Digital commerce changes how customers are reached, but the historical question of whose labour is recognized continues to matter. Its significance lies in whether new commercial arrangements also change ownership, remuneration and decision-making.

International debates gradually broadened the meaning of women’s economic equality beyond entry into paid employment. The Beijing Platform for Action placed women’s access to resources, employment and economic decision-making alongside the recognition of unremunerated work (United Nations, 1995). This approach remains relevant to home-based digital enterprises, where production and household obligations occupy the same space. A seller’s ability to earn cannot be separated from the time and support available for conducting business. The historical movement toward recognition therefore provides a basis for examining activities that conventional descriptions of entrepreneurship may overlook.

India’s legal recognition of electronic transactions developed through the Information Technology Act, 2000 (Government of India, 2000). Earlier forms of electronic commerce commonly required resources and technical assistance that were difficult for very small businesses to obtain. Subsequent mobile communication made it more feasible to display goods, contact buyers and maintain a customer network without establishing a large commercial infrastructure. This change reduced some barriers to entry while leaving production costs, business knowledge and social restrictions unresolved. The ability to communicate commercially became more accessible than the ability to build a secure enterprise.

The development of digital payment infrastructure further altered everyday trading possibilities. The Unified Payments Interface pilot was launched in April 2016, according to the National Payments Corporation of India’s product booklet (NPCI, n.d.). Electronic payment could accompany an order initiated through a message or photograph. During the pandemic, the Global Findex research documented wider use of digital payments internationally (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2022). These developments help explain the growing relevance of digital commerce, but they do not demonstrate a uniform improvement in women’s autonomy. Access to an account and authority over its use remain different questions.

Rajasthan’s recent livelihood planning connects established producer groups with new market arrangements. Official minutes from November 2025 describe a proposed common e-marketplace for Rajeevika, including multilingual functions, payment integration and order management (Department of Information Technology and Communication, 2025). The document records an institutional direction rather than verified gains for Jaipur’s women. Read historically, it indicates a shift from helping producers make goods toward addressing how those goods reach customers. Whether this transition redistributes commercial power depends on who manages the accounts, bears transaction risks and controls the proceeds. Jaipur’s digital economy should consequently be understood as a changing set of relationships rather than an automatic departure from earlier inequalities.

The historical comparison therefore concerns both changing technologies and the continuing negotiation of women’s place within commercial decision-making structures.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND APPROACH

The title’s opposition between empowerment and vulnerability is useful as a question, but it should not force a choice between two exclusive outcomes. An enterprise may give a woman confidence in dealing with buyers while exposing her to unpredictable returns. She may value working from home while wanting more freedom to travel for training. Such experiences are not contradictions to be removed from the analysis. They reveal how gains in one relationship can coexist with constraints in another. Evaluation should examine the conditions of participation rather than classify every online seller as either successful or exploited.

Agency is particularly important when a business is described as woman-led. Relevant questions concern who decides prices, purchases materials, negotiates contracts and authorizes withdrawals. Ownership records may not explain how these decisions occur. Assistance from relatives can be valuable, yet assistance differs from taking over the enterprise. A practical assessment should ask whether the woman can understand, review and change decisions made on her behalf. This approach recognizes interdependence without assuming that autonomy requires operating alone.

Intersectionality also guides the inquiry. Crenshaw (1989) demonstrated how analysis can miss disadvantage when it isolates categories that interact in people’s lives. Applied here, the concept directs attention to differences in income, caste, disability, age, education and household circumstances. These are questions for investigation, not grounds for claiming that all members of a group share identical experiences. A programme centered on a confident, English-speaking account holder may be poorly suited to a craft worker who requires language support or a seller using a shared device.

The evidence is read at its appropriate geographical and institutional scale. National surveys establish wider patterns; Rajasthan documents indicate state priorities; neither supplies a representative picture of Jaipur’s digital sellers. International reports identify issues worth examining locally without proving their local frequency. This method supports reasoned propositions and recommendations while withholding causal claims that would require fieldwork. The contribution is an analytical framework for assessing economic participation, with attention to what available evidence can and cannot establish.

JAIPUR AND THE CONDITIONS OF DIGITAL INCLUSION

Digital inclusion begins before a woman makes her first sale. She needs reliable access to a device, affordable connectivity and sufficient privacy to communicate. Access through a household member may allow occasional browsing while preventing timely replies or independent account recovery. A business depending on such access can appear digitally connected but remain operationally fragile. Support programmes should therefore distinguish personal use, occasional permission and meaningful control over the tools required for trading.

The Comprehensive Modular Survey on Telecom, conducted nationally in January–March 2025, illustrates this distinction. Among urban people aged 15–24, reported internet use during the preceding three months was 95.0% for females and 97.0% for males, while mobile ownership was 69.5% and 82.7%, respectively (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation [MoSPI], 2025a). These figures concern an age group across urban India, not Jaipur entrepreneurs. They show why widespread use should not be mistaken for equal ownership or reliable business access. The survey also cautions users about sample size and precision when interpreting subnational estimates.

For Jaipur, digital competence should be understood through business tasks. Posting an image is different from calculating a margin, checking an unfamiliar payment request or documenting an agreement. Skills are also uneven within a person’s own experience: a seller may be excellent at communicating product details but uncomfortable with account settings. Treating these differences as a general lack of literacy can discourage participation. Training is more useful when it begins with an actual task and allows repeated practice using familiar products, languages and devices.

The local commercial relationship extends beyond the screen. Materials, packaging, pickup arrangements and customer confidence all affect whether an online order can be fulfilled. A seller may attract distant buyers but struggle to send an item without damage or at an acceptable cost. A provider of services may need safe transport despite receiving bookings online. Digital entry therefore shifts the location of some barriers while leaving others intact. Jaipur-based support should connect online skills with the physical arrangements that make commerce possible.

Collective arrangements offer one possible response. A group could share photography equipment, packaging space or a trained assistant while retaining each member’s control over prices and receipts. Rajasthan’s One Block One Product material links livelihood development with value chains and producer capacity (RGAVP, n.d.). Its relevance to Jaipur is a basis for considering shared services, not proof that a particular arrangement has already succeeded there. Governance matters: collective support should make information accessible and responsibilities clear, rather than create another intermediary whose decisions members cannot question.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN’S ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION

Social media can reduce the cost of establishing an initial public presence. A small seller can display a limited range, explain customization and test interest before committing to substantial stock. Messages allow questions about colour, size, delivery or availability to be answered directly. For women whose access to commercial premises is constrained, this route may create an entry point. Its value should be judged against the seller’s actual alternatives, including whether a modest, manageable enterprise meets her goals better than an externally prescribed model of rapid growth.

Direct contact may also help sellers understand demand. Repeated enquiries can reveal which product descriptions are unclear, which specifications customers value and where delivery arrangements need improvement. This knowledge can inform purchasing and production. However, the seller needs records that distinguish genuine demand from casual interest. An enquiry is not a completed sale, and popularity is not a margin. Business support can turn customer interaction into usable information by helping women record orders, cancellations, repeat purchases and the costs associated with each.

Digital payments can make receipts easier to record and reduce some difficulties of collecting cash from distant customers. The Global Findex framework distinguishes access to financial services from their use, an important distinction for women operating small enterprises (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2022). In Jaipur, an analytical priority is whether the seller can independently inspect receipts and decide how funds are spent. Payment in a relative’s account may facilitate transactions while leaving control unresolved. The opportunity becomes more substantial when financial access is accompanied by understanding and decision-making authority.

An online business identity can also make a woman’s skill more visible. A product’s presentation may identify the maker, communicate care in production and allow buyers to return to the same seller. This recognition can matter where work has previously been described simply as help within a family enterprise. Visibility nevertheless needs commercial substance. The woman’s name on an account should correspond to authority over the business, a clear share of earnings and access to the records through which performance can be understood.

Learning opportunities are another potential benefit. Sellers can compare presentation methods, observe customer questions and exchange practical knowledge with peers. A supportive group may help resolve unfamiliar delivery or payment situations without requiring every member to make the same mistake independently. Mentoring should explain why a particular decision worked and under what conditions it might fail. Advice based only on a highly visible success story can encourage inappropriate spending. More useful learning includes modest enterprises, unsuccessful experiments and careful decisions not to expand.

A simple margin calculation can clarify whether customer access translates into worthwhile income. Consider an illustrative seller who receives an order and subtracts materials, packaging, delivery and advertising expenditure from the payment. The remaining amount still needs to compensate production and communication time. If family members contribute labour, their contribution also deserves recognition. This example supplies no local income estimate; it identifies information that a seller needs before repeating or expanding an order. Support with these calculations may be more valuable than advice to attract followers, because it connects commercial activity with a sustainable return.

VULNERABILITY WITHIN DIGITAL COMMERCE

Low entry costs do not remove the costs of staying visible. Product photography, customer replies, advertising and repeated content preparation consume time and money. A seller may feel compelled to remain available after household work is finished because customers expect immediate responses. The apparent flexibility of home-based commerce can therefore become an extended working day. Evaluating earnings without measuring this labour risks describing intensified effort as progress. A viable business needs hours and boundaries that can be sustained without sacrificing health, rest or other valued activities.

National time-use evidence makes this concern harder to dismiss. Among participants aged six years and above, women spent an average of 289 minutes daily on unpaid domestic services, compared with 88 minutes for men, in the 2024 Time Use Survey (MoSPI, 2025b). These are national participant averages, not working-time estimates for Jaipur’s sellers. They provide context for investigating whether business activity is added to existing domestic obligations. Research should record when work occurs, interruptions and whose time makes the enterprise possible, rather than infer that operating from home solves the care problem.

Dependence on a platform introduces another form of insecurity. A seller may build relationships in a space where she cannot control visibility, account restrictions or the handling of disputes. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO, 2021) platform research shows the importance of examining how digital intermediaries organise work and distribute power. Its findings about labour platforms cannot simply be transferred to product sellers. The analytical connection concerns dependence: an intermediary’s decisions can affect income while leaving an individual with limited information or bargaining capacity.

Transaction risks also deserve careful attention. A buyer may cancel a customised order after production, dispute delivery or send misleading information about payment. A damaged shipment may trigger disagreement among the seller, carrier and purchaser about responsibility. These possibilities do not justify treating every buyer as suspicious. They justify clear records, proportionate advance arrangements and understandable terms. Women need practical knowledge about documenting commercial exchanges, with access to assistance when a dispute exceeds what a small enterprise can manage alone.

Online visibility can expose a seller to gendered abuse. Business contact details may be used for unsolicited messages, threats or attempts to obtain personal information. UN Women (2023) identifies the difficulty of defining and measuring technology-facilitated violence consistently. This article consequently makes no claim about its prevalence among Jaipur entrepreneurs. It treats safety as a commercial condition: harassment can consume working time, discourage public communication and undermine the confidence required to maintain a customer-facing account. The economic implications deserve investigation alongside other business costs.

Privacy problems can arise even without a deliberate attack. A seller may publish a home address, share an order screenshot containing a customer’s number or rely on a personal account for every transaction. These practices can blur the boundaries between commercial communication and household life. Training should explain how to minimize unnecessary disclosure and manage records securely. It must also recognize that low-cost businesses may lack separate devices or premises. Support should offer workable alternatives rather than impose standards that only well-resourced enterprises can meet.

Finance and growth can generate vulnerability as well. An enterprise may borrow to purchase stock after receiving encouraging online attention, only to discover that interest does not convert into orders. Advertising expenditure, returns and delivery charges can absorb apparently promising revenue. A seller needs to know how much can be lost without threatening essential household needs. Appropriate finance should support a tested business plan and transparent repayment obligations. Pressure to scale quickly can undermine the cautious experimentation that initially made digital commerce accessible.

The most overlooked risk is exclusion hidden behind visible success. Public accounts tend to show women who remain active, while those who leave after losses or harassment become harder to find. Women without private devices may never enter the visible pool. A study limited to thriving accounts would systematically miss these experiences. For Jaipur, vulnerability must therefore include obstacles to entry and the reasons for withdrawal. Otherwise, a programme can appear successful precisely because its least-supported participants disappear from the evidence.

Risk can also accumulate across a supply chain. A small seller may promise delivery before knowing whether materials will arrive, or accept a low price because she expects a repeat buyer. When circumstances change, she can find herself responsible for commitments shaped partly by other businesses. Written specifications and realistic schedules reduce ambiguity, but information must flow between suppliers, sellers and delivery services. Jaipur-focused research should examine these relationships rather than treat the woman’s account as the entire enterprise. The apparent independence of an online storefront can conceal reliance on several actors whose decisions affect its survival.

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

International experience reinforces the need to distinguish connectivity from economic inclusion. The GSMA’s (2025) report states that women were 14% less likely than men to use mobile internet across low- and middle-income countries. This is a relative gap, not a fourteen-percentage-point difference and not a Jaipur estimate. Its significance here is methodological: digital markets are entered from unequal starting positions. A programme that waits for women to arrive online before offering assistance may fail to reach those facing the strongest constraints.

OECD (2024) analysis shows that narrowing gaps in internet use does not eliminate inequalities in digital innovation and entrepreneurship. Women remain underrepresented in important technology-related activities even where basic access is widespread. The lesson for Jaipur is that admission to a platform should not be the final objective. Women need opportunities to develop commercial and technical knowledge, negotiate with service providers and influence the systems on which their enterprises depend. Basic familiarity can begin a longer process without being presented as its completion.

The World Bank’s (2024) Women, Business and the Law report draw attention to legal frameworks, supportive institutions and implementation. Its relevance extends beyond whether a woman may formally start a business. Childcare, safety and enforceable protections shape her ability to act on that permission. Applied to Jaipur, this perspective supports examining whether a seller can attend training, access services and obtain an effective response to wrongdoing. A legal entitlement becomes economically useful through practical conditions that enable its exercise.

International platform-work discussions provide another caution. The ILO (2021) examines opportunities alongside working conditions, social protection and governance. Product-selling businesses differ from workers completing platform-assigned tasks, so their categories should remain distinct. Nevertheless, both settings raise questions about unpaid effort, opaque decisions and the ability to contest treatment. Jaipur’s digital-commerce initiatives can learn from this debate by making contracts understandable and creating accessible support when an enterprise depends heavily on an intermediary’s account, payment or dispute systems.

The Global Digital Compact, adopted in 2024, situates digital cooperation within commitments concerning inclusion and human rights (United Nations, 2024). UNCTAD’s (2024) Digital Economy Report also stresses the need for inclusive and environmentally sustainable digitalisation. For Jaipur, these commitments suggest judging expansion by its distribution of benefits and costs. More transactions are insufficient evidence of progress when women absorb avoidable losses, waste or unsafe demands. International principles are most useful when translated into questions that a local programme can answer through records and participant experience.

LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES

India’s Information Technology Act, 2000 supplies a foundational legal framework for electronic transactions, while the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 address commercial practices across relevant digital markets (Government of India, 2000; Department of Consumer Affairs, 2020). Their relevance does not mean that every seller’s dispute falls within the same remedy. A woman may be a trader, a purchaser or a service provider in different transactions. Business assistance should identify her position and the nature of the problem before referring her to an appropriate complaint mechanism.

Personal data protection adds another dimension. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 establishes a framework concerning the processing of digital personal data (Government of India, 2023). The rules notified in November 2025 provide a phased implementation schedule (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology [MeitY], 2025). Notification should not be described as making every substantive obligation immediately operative. For small enterprises, the practical priority is clear guidance on applicable responsibilities, secure record handling and the information required for legitimate commercial purposes, supported by current official advice.

An accessible response system must also distinguish urgent harm from ordinary commercial disagreement. Threats or fraudulent activity can require a different institutional response from a disagreement about a product specification. A local helpdesk could assist with organizing transaction records, recognizing the relevant issue and identifying the appropriate authority or platform process. Such support should avoid blaming a woman for having participated publicly. If seeking help becomes an admission that online work was inappropriate, families may use an incident to restrict her future participation.

Rajasthan’s proposed Rajeevika e-marketplace illustrates an institutional effort to connect producers with wider markets (Department of Information Technology and Communication, 2025). The proposal includes practical functions related to catalogues, payments and fulfilment; it is not evidence of realized empowerment. Evaluation should establish who operates the interface, how women receive proceeds and what happens when an order fails. Shared infrastructure can reduce individual burdens, but it should include transparent accounts and understandable avenues for questioning decisions.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR JAIPUR

Jaipur needs business assistance organized around transactions rather than one-off motivational events. Training should work through a real order: pricing materials and labour, preparing an accurate description, agreeing specifications, verifying receipt, arranging delivery and resolving a complaint. Follow-up matters because difficulties often arise after the workshop. Small cohorts, local language support and practical mentoring can help participants develop skills they can use independently. Completion should be demonstrated through tasks rather than attendance alone.

Shared commercial services should reduce costs without removing control. Community organisations or enterprise-support centres could offer product photography, packaging advice, bookkeeping assistance and scheduled access to equipment. Written arrangements should explain charges, responsibility for losses and the handling of receipts. Women should be able to obtain their own records and move to another provider. A service that makes entry easier but locks a seller into unexplained dependence would reproduce the problem it was intended to solve.

Safety should be built into enterprise support from the outset. Participants need practical assistance with account recovery, secure communication and retaining evidence of transactions or abuse. Platforms and support providers should offer complaint processes that are understandable to sellers with varied language and technical skills. Women should help design these arrangements because their experience can reveal barriers that formal procedures miss. The objective is continued, safe participation, including the freedom to reduce exposure or pause work without surrendering the enterprise.

Finally, programmes should measure economic quality. Useful indicators include net returns, control over income, predictable working hours, repeat customers and resolution of complaints. Evaluation should also record losses, withdrawal and changes in unpaid work. These measures would establish whether participation expands choices instead of merely increasing activity. Jaipur can support enterprises of different sizes and ambitions while holding public initiatives accountable for the conditions under which women actually work.

Families should be included in support where women want their participation, while preserving the seller’s opportunity to speak privately. Discussions can address who provides care during training, whose device is used and how commercial income is recorded. This approach makes the practical arrangements of enterprise visible without assuming that every household responds similarly. Participation by relatives should support the woman’s decisions rather than become a requirement for institutional assistance. A woman who lacks such support needs alternatives, including accessible appointments and independent guidance, so that eligibility does not depend on already having the conditions that empowerment programmes seek to Create.

CONCLUSION

Social media and digital commerce can widen women’s access to customers, payments and commercial recognition in Jaipur. They offer ways to begin trading without some of the costs associated with conventional premises and provide opportunities to learn from buyers and peers. Their value is conditional, however. A woman may gain orders while remaining unable to control receipts, bear increased domestic and business workloads, or depend on systems she cannot effectively question. Empowerment and vulnerability can consequently coexist within the same enterprise.

The article’s central distinction is between participation in economic activity and authority over its outcomes. Digital access is meaningful when it supports informed decisions, fair remuneration and practical alternatives. Safety and institutional responsiveness are part of this economic foundation. Neither an account nor an increase in sales can establish these conditions on its own. Evaluation must ask whose work is visible, who retains the earnings and who bears the risks.

For Jaipur, the appropriate response combines commercial support with attention to care, privacy, platform dependence and access to redress. Published evidence supports these priorities but cannot establish their local prevalence without fieldwork. A credible account of digital empowerment should therefore recognize opportunities, examine costs and remain open to experiences of refusal or withdrawal. Women’s economic progress is better judged by durable improvements in choice and security than by the appearance of online success.

FUTURE SCOPE

Future research should develop a Jaipur-specific evidence base through a clearly defined sample of women engaged in digital selling and related services. Recruitment should extend beyond active social media accounts to local producer networks, enterprise-support organizations and women who have discontinued trading. Comparisons with offline sellers and non-participants would help distinguish the influence of digital channels from advantages associated with education, prior business experience or household resources. Any study should state its sampling limitations before presenting estimates for a wider population.

Repeated interviews and financial diaries would be more informative than a single survey of perceived benefits. Researchers could document receipts, operating costs, payment delays, working hours and decision-making over several months. Short time diaries would reveal interruptions and the interaction between business activity and care. Confidential interviews could explore why assistance becomes dependence and whether women feel able to refuse buyers or family demands. These methods should preserve consent and avoid collecting unnecessary customer details or exposing participants’ commercial information.

Programme evaluation should compare different forms of assistance, including mentoring, shared services and integrated safety support. Follow-up must include participants who stop attending or close their accounts. Research on emerging tools, including automated content and translation, should assess accuracy, privacy, expense and control rather than assume that convenience produces empowerment. A longitudinal approach would allow Jaipur’s institutions to learn which arrangements create sustainable gains and which transfer new burdens to women. Such evidence could guide policy toward inclusive participation grounded in women’s own priorities.

Researchers should also return findings to participants in an accessible form. Women could review whether the interpretation reflects their experience and identify practical questions for later investigation. This process would improve the usefulness of the study while keeping academic analysis distinct from promises of assistance. Reporting should explain both the opportunities identified and the limits of the evidence, allowing local institutions to respond responsibly. The resulting evidence should inform decisions about support, accountability and inclusion.

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