Doctoral Students of the School of Economics Publish Research Findings in the Field of Digital Economy and Women’s Development

Recently, doctoral students Xue Qihang and Wang Huimin from the School of Economics, Shandong University, published their team’s latest research findings Does the digital economy improve female autonomy? online in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (SSCI, Q1, IF/2023: 5). Xue Qihang is the first author, Wang Huimin is the corresponding author, and Professor Wei Jian from the Zhongtai Securities Institute for Financial Studies, Shandong University, is the third author. Shandong University is the first author and sole corresponding author institution.

As a strategic choice for a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the digital economy not only plays an important role in residents’ consumption, enterprise investment and economic transformation, but also has a huge impact on social division of labor, income distribution and even personal ideology. This paper explores the impact of digital economy development on female autonomy, and finds that the development of the digital economy has significantly improved female autonomy, both economic independence and spiritual independence. At the same time, the development of the digital economy can also alleviate women’s "marriage penalty" and "motherhood penalty". Mechanism analysis shows that the digital economy promotes female autonomy mainly through career security effect and capital consolidation effect for women. Therefore, it is necessary to further strengthen women’s digital literacy, vigorously support women-friendly new forms of employment, and promote female labor force to realize their own value in the digital economy era and achieve common prosperity.

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (SSCI), with an impact factor of 5 in 2023 and 5.3 in the past five years. Founded by Nobel Prize laureate Wassily Leontief, it is a top journal in the field of structural economics and is currently included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Q1.