Fintech for Green Empowerment: Digital and Financial Inclusion as Catalysts for Ethnic Women‐Led Sustainable Enterprises

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study critically examines how financial technology (fintech) may facilitate digital and financial inclusion for ethnic minority and Indigenous women engaged in environmentally oriented livelihood and enterprise practices within historically marginalized communities. The study adopts a context‐sensitive and intersectional perspective, recognizing that digital inclusion and entrepreneurship are culturally embedded rather than universally transferable models of development. Using a conceptual review approach guided by the PRISMA framework, 43 studies published between 2019 and 2025 were systematically analyzed to explore how fintech tools such as mobile money, crowdfunding, peer‐to‐peer lending, and blockchain‐enabled systems interact with local socio‐economic realities, community trust structures, and production systems that demonstrate environmental or sustainability‐related objectives in particular local settings. The findings suggest that fintech can support expanded economic participation and market access and facilitate environmentally oriented enterprise development where such an orientation is locally demonstrated, provided that digital financial systems are adapted to local cultural contexts, institutional conditions, and community‐based practices. Meaningful inclusion depends on culturally grounded forms of digital engagement, participatory governance, and the interpretive translation of entrepreneurial and financial systems. The study contributes to sustainable development scholarship by integrating perspectives from inclusive development, intersectionality, digital inclusion, and decolonial approaches to entrepreneurship and finance. Policy implications emphasize the need for gender‐responsive, culturally situated, and community‐embedded fintech ecosystems. The review further emphasizes that successful fintech interventions require not only technological accessibility but also broader processes of “worldview translation” through which digital financial systems become socially intelligible and culturally legitimate within local community contexts.