The tripartite intersection of entrepreneurship, gender, and digitalization through an integrated lens of the FIT-5M framework

Purpose This study aims investigate how Emirati women entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates food and beverage (F&B) sector negotiate gendered institutional norms within digital entrepreneurial ecosystems, using an integrated Feminist Institutional Theory (FIT)-5M framework to connect institutional logics with resource mobilization and role expectations. Integrating FIT with the 5M model is theoretically warranted because FIT clarifies how formal, informal and cognitive institutions shape women’s opportunities, while the 5M dimensions (money, market, management, motherhood, macro/meso) specify how these institutional forces are experienced as concrete constraints and enablers in women’s entrepreneurial lives. Design/methodology/approach Adopting an interpretivist, feminist stance, the study uses reflexive thematic analysis to capture how meaning-making around legitimacy, modesty and agency is co-constructed between the researcher and participants, which aligns more closely with the study’s epistemology than structured coding templates such as Gioia’s. Twenty Emirati women founders and co-founders of digitally enabled F&B ventures were selected through purposive and snowball sampling to secure information-rich variation across age, emirate, venture maturity and format (home-based bakeries, hybrid cafés and restaurants, confectionery brands and online-only concepts), with thematic sufficiency achieved consistent with qualitative entrepreneurship standards. Findings Findings reveal that digital platforms expand reach and autonomy but simultaneously reinforce normative boundaries, producing context-specific forms of bounded visibility and legitimacy work. Five interlinked mechanisms are identified – bounded visibility, family governance and moral pacing, meso-level translation, capability formation and online-to-offline risk work – showing how motherhood and macro/meso condition money, market and management in the Gulf context. Research limitations/implications The focus on Emirati nationals in the F&B sector limits statistical generalizability but offers analytically transferable insights for similar patriarchal, digitally transforming economies. Future research could incorporate cross-sectoral or comparative regional studies to validate and generalize these mechanisms. Practical implications The study highlights the need for culturally congruent ecosystem supports, including women-led mentorship, gender-responsive platform and policy design. Originality/value The research advances a context-specific theory of bounded agency in platformised markets, deepening both FIT and 5M by demonstrating how digital technologies relocate, rather than erase, patriarchal institutional logics.