Gender Inequality in the Influencer Marketing Industry: Is the New Era of Entrepreneurship Replicating Traditional Norms in the Digital Sphere?

This paper explores the gender inequalities that exist within the influencer marketing industry in Bangladesh. The overarching research question that it strives to answer is “Is the new era of entrepreneurship replicating traditional norms in the digital sphere?” Ideas are drawn from existing literature on social media, gender roles amongst digital entrepreneurs and social media influencers (SMIs), income inequality, and self-branding, namely the understanding that heteronormative ideas about gender greatly influence an individual’s behaviour as a digital entrepreneur. Prescribed gender roles often have cultural implications in terms of social decorum, modesty, and other norms, causing SMIs to behave accordingly. It was ascertained that most of the literature that exists about the nascent influencer marketing industry has largely overlooked developing countries and attempts to fill this gap by being one of the pioneering studies on SMIs in developing countries. This dissertation employs a quantitative, positivist approach, using an online questionnaire to understand the casual relationships between gender, industry of operation, income, and self-branding. 101 responses were analysed, and it was determined that gender clearly has an impact on the choice of industry, income, and self-branding proclivities amongst the SMIs in Bangladesh. The key limitations to this study are the time constraints and the limited qualitative data collected; the research recognises that these issues exist but does not clearly identify the reasoning. The study concludes by explaining the gaps that it filled in literature, discussing some practical implications for the study such as possible steps for the alleviation of the existing income inequality, and suggesting that future research include more qualitative feedback to gain a better understanding of the underlying reasons behind the phenomenon identified