Online business: ambitious daughters and their suspicious career in China?

Purpose Online business can be an attractive career choice but bears gendered implications under China’s market economy. This study aims to examine how highly educated young women negotiate their career choice of online business, given their enhanced career ambitions and the persisting conservative views of their parents. It is to be examined how these factors interact in shaping women’s strategies and commitment to their nonconventional careers. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on 23 interviews with 18 women involved in online business. The interviews were coded by themes about how women perceive and make career choices to enter online business, the influence of various motivations (e.g., economic security, decency, autonomy and earning potential) and women’s interactions with their parents under gendered social expectations. The study analyzes and categorizes women’s varied strategies and levels of commitment in taking up online business, an attractive but suspicious career for highly educated young women. Findings The study finds that some women chose to conduct online business as a secondary job behind their stable and formal primary job; their compromise under parents’ preferences and social expectations as “compliant daughters,” willingly or forced, coexisted with their persisting interest in online entrepreneurship. Other women, or “self-determined daughters,” embraced online business as their primary job; some benefited from parents’ tolerant views, but others needed to handle the pressure of parental disapproval by hiding or proving their nonconventional career choices worthwhile. Originality/value This study speaks to the gendered opportunity-necessity framework of entrepreneurship by illustrating women’s multiple motivations in China’s market reforms and the rising online entrepreneurship dynamics. The findings contextualize women’s career choices in different family dynamics and suggest how social expectations and gender norms are imposed and transformed, with a focus on the shifting gendered concerns of opportunity, security and decency in an era of digital economy.