Does access liberalise gender norms around phone use for rural women?
by Giorgia Barboni, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, and Natalie Theys
October 13, 2021
Despite improved connectivity, deep-rooted gender norms continue to shape access to and use of mobile technologies by women in India. This note discusses preliminary findings from a study, which suggests that the share of women who believe that supervised or unsupervised use of phones is appropriate increased significantly in the initial period after distribution of free phones under Sanchar Kranti Yojana in Chhattisgarh, indicating that access led to liberalisation of norms.
Despite expansion of mobile phone availability and network connectivity in India, deep-rooted gender norms continue to shape access to and use of mobile technologies by girls and women. In 2018, as part of an effort to address this digital divide, the state government of Chhattisgarh led an initiative to provide free smartphones to millions of women across the state under a programme called Sanchar Kranti Yojana (SKY). This presented a unique opportunity for us to study how norms governing phone use change when phones are provided directly to women.