Executive summary
For women entrepreneurs around the world, the digital economy is no longer a future opportunity — it is already shaping how businesses reach customers, receive payments, access finance, manage information, and grow. Mobile phones, social media, digital financial services, e-learning platforms, and AI tools are creating new possibilities for women-led micro and small enterprises (W-MSEs). But these opportunities are not equally accessible. Across CARE’s Women’s Entrepreneurship programming, one lesson is clear: digital access does not automatically translate into digital business capability.
A woman may own a smartphone but not know how to use it for business. She may use WhatsApp socially but not for customer management. She may have a mobile money account but lack confidence, control, or safety awareness. She may experiment with AI tools but not yet have the business foundations to evaluate or act on the advice she receives. These gaps matter because digital skills programming often assumes a single starting point — offering the same content, through the same channels, to women with very different levels of readiness.
CARE developed the Digital Skills Framework for W-MSEs to address this challenge. The framework classifies women entrepreneurs across four broad levels of digital capability: Pre-Digital, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. These levels describe where women are broadly starting from, from limited use of phones or internet-enabled tools to more strategic use of digital platforms, data, and AI. The framework is not a rigid scorecard, and it is not intended to push every entrepreneur toward the most advanced tools. Instead, it helps CARE and partners identify the next useful digital step for each woman entrepreneur, based on her business model, goals, risks, and operating context.
The framework is grounded in CARE’s programming experience with two groups: Strive Women W-MSEs in Pakistan, Peru, and Vietnam, and emerging VSLA-linked W-MSEs in markets such as Uganda, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana. It draws on Strive Women baseline data, country team validation sessions, consultation with the CARE Digital Impact team, and global digital skills frameworks from GSMA, the European Union’s DigComp, World Bank, IFC, and others. The report, and related digital and AI skills building activities, were generously supported through the HP Foundation and its social impact initiatives.
The framework has three main components. First, the four levels provide a simple headline segmentation. Second, seven diagnostic dimensions help explain where support is needed: device access, mobile financial services, internet usage, digital literacy, confidence and self-efficacy, digital business use cases, and AI business use cases. Third, two crosscutting themes — Autonomy & Control and Safety & Cybersecurity — remind us that digital capability is shaped not only by skills, but also by who controls devices, accounts, PINs, privacy, and digital decisions, and whether women can protect themselves from fraud, scams, harassment, deepfakes, and other risks.
Early use of the framework across Strive Women markets has surfaced several important lessons:
- Age shapes digital readiness, with younger women often progressing faster, though age does not determine capability.
- Autonomy drives progression: women who control their own phones, accounts, PINs, and digital decisions are better positioned to build digital skills.
- Digital financial services can serve as a bridge from Basic to Intermediate capability when women understand fees, control accounts, and connect transactions to business management.
- Safety and cybersecurity are no longer optional; they must be embedded across all levels of digital skills programming.
- And importantly, Advanced is not always the goal. For some entrepreneurs, the right next step may be using WhatsApp more professionally, accepting digital payments safely, or separating business records. For others, AI tools, analytics, e-commerce, or paid digital marketing may be appropriate.
The framework is designed to help CARE and partners make better decisions. It can be used to segment women entrepreneurs, tailor training, strengthen Women- Centered Design, align financial service providers and digital partners, and support measurement and learning. It also helps teams avoid overestimating readiness when designing app-based loans, AI assistants, online courses, digital finance tools, or e-commerce pathways. Used well, the framework helps CARE and partners move from broad assumptions — “she has a phone,” “she uses social media,” “she is digitally included” — toward more useful questions: What can she do independently? What does she control? What is safe for her? What business function is she trying to strengthen? And what support would help her take the next appropriate step?
Ultimately, this framework is a step toward more intentional digital access and use. It helps CARE and its partners design digital skills programming that is segmented, practical, women-centered, and grounded in real business needs — so that women entrepreneurs can use digital tools safely, confidently, and with greater control over their economic futures.