| Abstract | In the context of rapid digitalization, Facebook has become an important platform for women-led micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Cambodia to promote products, communicate with customers, and sustain business visibility. However, while women entrepreneurs increasingly participate in digital spaces, less is understood about how gendered social realities shape their ability to strategically interpret and utilize Facebook’s analytical and social customer relationship management (SCRM) tools. This study examines how women entrepreneurs in urban Cambodia exercise digital agency in using Facebook for marketing and customer engagement under uneven sociotechnical and gendered conditions. Guided by the sociotechnical perspective and the digital agency framework, the study adopts a qualitative multi-method approach using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 12 women entrepreneurs operating food and beverage (F&B) and aesthetic businesses in urban Cambodia. The findings reveal that Facebook functions as a low-cost infrastructure for visibility, customer interaction, and market participation. However, women entrepreneurs’ transition from operational participation toward strategic and analytical engagement remains uneven. While some respondents used customer engagement patterns, livestream interactions, Facebook insights, and multi-platform coordination to inform marketing decisions and customer segmentation, many struggled to sustain deeper analytical engagement due to fragmented learning conditions, limited technical confidence, unstable platform systems, and overlapping gendered responsibilities related to caregiving, household management, emotional labor, professional work, and business operations. The study argues that women entrepreneurs’ digital agency is adaptive, relational, and situated rather than uniformly empowering. Facebook does not automatically generate business advantage through access alone. Instead, women’s ability to transform digital visibility into strategic business outcomes depends heavily on continuity of learning, organizational support, and their capacity to negotiate gendered labor expectations alongside entrepreneurial responsibilities. The study contributes to scholarship on gender and digital entrepreneurship by emphasizing interpretive engagement and the gendered realities shaping women entrepreneurs’ digital practices in urban Cambodia. |
