The Rise of the Asian Female Digital Nomad

Abstract

This feminist thesis contributes to our understanding of tourist experiences by exploring the constraints and empowerment of Asian women digital nomads. It investigates the complexity and the diversity of Asian women digital nomads and elucidates the issues of gender and race in the women’s quests for a nomadic lifestyle. The empirical data were drawn from mixed method techniques of semi-structured interview and photo-elicitation, which gave the seven women opportunities to share, reflect, and discuss their thoughts and experiences while being digital nomads. The findings are presented as three overarching stories of reasons, constraints, and empowerment. Most of the women experienced constraints in various forms in their search for professional, personal, and spatial freedoms which evidently shaped their digital nomadic experiences. In the midst of their constraints, the women were resilient and robust in their negotiations of westernized digital nomad discourses and were able to transform their selves. The diversity and complexity of the Asian women digital nomad experiences revealed that their experiences were also shaped by the intersection of gender and race.