A priority action roadmap for women's economic empowerment (PARWEE) amid COVID-19: a co-creation approach

Bonin, S.; Singh, W.; Suresh, V.; Rashed, T.; Uppaal, K.; Nair, R.; Bhavani, R. R.

Purpose: The study aims to co-create a “priority action roadmap for women's economic empowerment” based on women's top priorities to charting recovery directions. Doing so contributes to the growing body of knowledge on COVID-19 literature in at least four areas: assessing COVID-19 impacts on women entrepreneurs;mapping these impacts with four interdependent women's entrepreneurial ecosystem components;innovating a co-creation methodology based on remote participatory research;and providing a replicable model to perform action-oriented research in the context of COVID-19 impacts. Design/methodology/approach: A co-creation methodology is proposed, combining systems-thinking and remote participatory research to engage women entrepreneurs and institutional stakeholders to prioritize impact, response actions and recovery needs in the wake of COVID-19. A ranking exercise using the analytic hierarchy process was used to derive ranking and assess user inputs' consistency. Findings: The study exemplifies the integration of participatory methods and mathematical tool to engage stakeholders in prioritizing recovery work. PARWEE action items ranked by entrepreneurs and vetted by institutional stakeholders cover: access to finances, capacity building, health care, public and private partnership, marketing opportunities and formation of active advocacy groups to voice out women entrepreneurs' needs to institutional stakeholders. Results show a slight difference in the ranking of priority actions between experience owners and fresh starters. Originality/value: This study innovated a new co-creation methodology for remotely engaging stakeholders of the women's entrepreneurial ecosystem, which is grounded in evidence and provides a replicable model for performing action-oriented research. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.