Gazan Women, Social Media and Small Business Ventures: Opportunities and a Challenges

The state of Palestine, whose total land is around 6020 square kilometers (Worldometer, 2021), consists of two developing areas: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The rest of Palestine is controlled by the Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation that was imposed on the land decades ago since 1948 has burdened the country with deteriorating economic situation of unbearable poverty and extraordinary unemployment rates, pushing Palestinians to find original mechanisms to sustain their basic needs. In particular, Palestinian women’s lifestyles have been profoundly challenged, where particular gender roles change to cope with the current harsh circumstances. Focusing on the geographically-restricted area of the Gaza Strip that has been suffering from an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2006, the objective of this study is to bring Palestinian women from the Gaza Strip to the center of a discussion about the gendered dimensions of women’s utilization of social media to launch private enterprises within a patriarchal society occupied by the Israeli occupation to sustain the needs of themselves and their families. A few studies have been carried out on women’s utilization of social media to start-up businesses within the context of the Gaza Strip. Three factors will be tackled throughout the analysis: challenging the social norms and patriarchy within the Gazan society, challenging the blockade of the Israeli occupation, and the novel use of social media platforms by Gazan women in starting-up their own enterprises to challenge both patriarchy and occupation. Four Gazan women entrepreneurs were interviewed to collect data that was qualitatively analyzed. Based on the analysis, the study concluded that the gender roles within the Gazan society are changing due to the high rates of unemployment and poverty, where many Gazan women occupy social media platforms using their own talents and hobbies to start businesses to help support their families. The findings of this study not only add to the feminist literature, but it also gives voices to some creative Gazan women, and gives insights to any business associations either within the Palestinian context or the international context on the different fields where Gazan women can achieve success, opening up new opportunities to the women in question.