The Gender Digital Divide in Mobile Internet Use: Evidence, Explanations and Policy for the Global South

Abstract

Most discussion of a gender gap in relation to the mobile Internet has focused on the differential access to this technology on the part of boys and men as against girls and women. But while this is undoubtedly an important component of a gender divide in mobile Internet technology, it ignores the possibility of a further divide, once access to the technology has been gained. Such a neglected divide has to do with the use of the mobile Internet, which determines its welfare effects on males and females. Until quite recently, however, the lack of survey data precluded such an analysis.

In fact, it is only in the last year or so that the data challenge has been taken up largely by the GSMA and published in the organization’s 2021 version of the Mobile Gender Gap Report. At both the regional and country levels, the results indicate that the gender use divide was generally apparent, though there were a few notable exceptions to it.

Among the possible reasons for this outcome, are the pervasiveness and strength of patriarchal norms and behaviour; the paucity of large-scale countervailing policies and the imperviousness to change of attitudes that favour males at school, in the home and in the labour market. Then too there are gendered differences in the learning process, having to do with sources of information and ways of mastering new skills.