Who runs the world? Gender performances and racialized branding among young foreign women digital entrepreneurs in China

Abstract

This article studies young foreign female entrepreneurs in China involved in online businesses, focusing on how the intersection of race and gender mediate their business strategies and success stories. Existing literature on foreign migrants in China describes the transnational corporate and entrepreneurial sector as male oriented. While a few studies of foreign women in China examine their experiences as trailing spouses, little attention has been paid to young women, millennials, and Gen Z, pursuing an independent business career in China. This research is based on semi-structured, long-distance interviews with twenty-seven foreign women in their early twenties to early thirties. The article attends to the recent transformations in China’s business sector, where the number of young foreign female entrepreneurs is rising. I identified two main themes in my respondents’ reflections on their entrepreneurial experiences. First, gender plays a role in how women negotiate doing business in China and escaping the so-called glass ceiling. Second, women strategically perform a racialized white identity, or desirable qualities associated with whiteness, to market their products. Such dynamics must be understood in relation to recent migration flows to China, including the negotiations and challenges that mainly women face to cope with business.