Sisters are doing it for themselves: an integrated framework of gendered resilience in early-stage digital entrepreneurship

Purpose This paper develops an integrated framework of gendered resilience in early-stage digital entrepreneurship, responding to recent calls to advance resilience research through multi-level, relational and gender-sensitive approaches. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-method design integrates fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and topic modelling to analyse 123 AI-driven reward-based crowdfunding campaigns. Combining configurational analysis with computational text analysis enables the identification of economic and engagement-related conditions associated with repeated entrepreneurial action and examines whether campaign narratives reflect these resilience pathways. Findings Results show that men achieve high resilience through homogeneous, economically anchored configurations in which financial performance functions as the central condition. Women exhibit multiple resilience pathways; instead, resilience emerges through hybrid structural–relational regimes combining economic traction with sustained relational and behavioural engagement. Topic modelling reveals parallel gendered distinctions in narrative content. Originality/value This paper provides one of the first integrative theoretical and empirical accounts of gendered resilience in the early-stage digital entrepreneurship by drawing on sociological constructs (social capital, homophily) and feminist inquiry and studying early entrepreneurship from meaning and mechanisms. It advances resilience theory by showing that women operate within hybrid structural–relational regimes shaped by constrained legitimacy and differential access to social capital, whereas men rely primarily on economic signals. It also extends gender and crowdfunding scholarship by demonstrating that platform infrastructures actively shape the visibility and evaluation of entrepreneurial resilience, amplifying existing gendered opportunity structures.