Pande and Coauthors: Understanding Barriers to and Impacts of Women's Mobile Phone Adoption in India
Researchers identify the leading causes of the mobile gender gap and propose directions for how to reduce it.
Originally published by Evidence for Policy Design, October 31, 2018.
Today in India, 71% of men own mobile phones, but only 38% of women do. South Asian countries in general are clear outliers among countries of similar levels of development, with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh exhibiting some of the world’s highest gender gaps in access to technology. While the mobile gender gap matters in its own right, it is particularly problematic because it can exacerbate other important forms of inequality — in earnings, networking opportunities, and access to information.
EPoD researchers use a range of sources — 125 original qualitative interviews, a literature review, and analysis of secondary quantitative data — to identify leading barriers to Indian women’s use of mobile phones, assess the importance of these barriers, and propose directions for further research into how to reduce them.
Keep reading the full report here.