collecting qualitative observations from public online spaces in Jordan. First, I analyze hundreds of business marketing posts in Facebook groups and document significant differences in male and female users’ posting behavior. Women are significantly more likely than men to conceal parts of their identity by using full names and real pictures on the profiles from which they market their businesses. Second, I document the existence of dozens of regional and national private women-only Facebook trading groups in Jordan, with thousands of members in each. These gender-segregated groups are often used as ‘safe spaces’ for female entreprenerus to interact and transact without male presence. Their popularity is consistent with existing evidence on female entrepreneurs generally segregating into female-dominated industries with less interactions with men (Ashraf, Delfino, and Glaeser 2019). Together, these observations suggest that cultural constraints on women’s visibility and interactions are often mirrored online, but also that female entrepreneurs use digital platforms’ features to operate _within_ these constraints, potentially at the expense of their businesses’ visibility.

Based on these findings, I set up an experiment aiming to increase businesses’ online exposure without compromising owners’ visibility. This is possible by setting up public Facebook business pages, which allow marketing a business without publicizing its owner’s identity. To understand the impact of online markets on low-mobility women, including those with limited digital literacy, I also designed the intervention to lift informational, logistical, and financial barriers to technology adoption. Particularly, I work with 1,122 female entrepreneurs recruited from a database of microfinance clients, and I randomize their access to logistical support in setting up virtual storefronts for their businesses on Facebook. The support offered creating a public Facebook business page, marketing it for up to 6 months, and covering paid advertisements of up to $20 for active pages. The support package therefore provided a digital marketing outsourcing service for the treatment group. To help treated participants maintain their online presence, the logistical support was additionally bundled with access to a virtual asynchronous training on digital marketing. The training was designed and shot in collaboration with social media influencers in Jordan. It contained 30 short videos and covered locally-curated best practices for digital marketing, including tips on content-creation, photography, and ways to market the business without compromising one’s privacy and well-being.

Conceptually, the intervention provides a ‘market access technology’ that expands customer reach beyond owners’ social networks. In the offline world, high mobility entrepreneurs should already have access to such a technology: they can set up public storefronts, roam around neighborhoods, and market in public squares. With no constraints on interactions with distant strangers, all those who would benefit from an expanded market access technology would have already adopted it offline. Low-mobility female entrepreneurs, on the other hand, might have inefficiently low levels of adoption. Productive businesses that might benefit from higher market access might therefore fail to access it due to offline constraints on their owners’ mobility. If the intervention successfully decreases the costs of expanded market access by digitizing it, we should expect significant business improvements for low-mobility entrepreneurs, and particularly those with high productivity among them.

To test this, I survey study participants six months after the intervention’s start date. First, I find that around half the participants engaged with the logistical support by sending the required information, such as business name and pictures. After the support team created pages based on this information, 37% of treated participants became owners of a newly created Facebook page, and an additional 20% already had one. In parallel, 59% of treated participants opened the online training 2