This post won the 2023 Laadli Media & Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity. This story also won the 2023 South Asian Laadli Media Awards.
As the pandemic spread, governments across the world imposed lockdowns that forced people to go digital. The world digitized faster than it had before, with adoption of digital technologies escalating by five years in just two months in 2020.
India, that aims to be a US $1 trillion digital economy by 2025, registered a five fold growth in uptake of digital technology, with the pandemic propelling a 500 percent increase in tele-health consultations, online shopping reaching 95 percent of districts, education moving entirely online and digital payments touching the 100 million transactions per day mark.
Yet, even as Covid-19 led to a cultural shift with respect to people’s digital consumption, it amplified another trend: the gendered digital divide, increasing the gap or inequalities between women and men with respect to access and adoption of digital technologies.
Impact of Digital Revolution On Gender Divide
Digital inequality manifests in three ways: firstly, a skills divide related to how individuals handle technologies and internet to access information; secondly, an economic opportunity divide resulting from people’s inability to participate in Internet-based education, training, and employment opportunities; and third, a democratic divide due to the inability to engage in e-government and the economy.
Despite rapid advancements in internet access in India, particularly via mobile internet use, which has nearly doubled from 2018-2020, India’s digital transformation has excluded its women. Presently, the country accounts for half of the world’s gendered digital divide.
The National Family Health Survey-5 data that assessed men’s and women’s internet use for the first time found that just 33 percent Indian women have ever used the internet, compared to 57 percent men. What is more, Indian women are 27 percent less likely than men to access the Internet – with just 8.4 percent being online, compared to 11.6 percent Indian men.
With respect to mobile phone usage, India has one of the worst gender gaps in the world, with women 20 percent less likely than men to own a phone. 54 percent Indian women own a mobile phone in India, compared to 79 percent men. Indian women are 50 percent less likely to use mobile internet, compared to Indian men, research shows.
Rural India faces an even more pronounced digital divide, with 49 percent having used the internet compared to 25 percent women. Interestingly, while household phone ownership in rural areas was only slightly lower than in urban areas (91% rural vs 93% urban) rural women’s access to mobile phones was far lower than their urban counterparts (42% rural vs 63% urban).
Research also points to education and income as being two important determinants with respect to adoption of digital technology. As per Census 2011, 66 percent Indian women are literate compared to 82 percent men, with the gender gap in education contributing directly to the ICT gender gap. More than 72% of women with over 12 years of education have used the internet, compared to just 8% of women who had studied until grade. Younger women were more likely to use the internet than older ones, and those in the highest wealth quintile were more likely to have used the internet than those in the lower quintiles, as per NHFS-5.
Why There Are Too Few Women Online
Researchers say that India’s gender gap is a result of three factors. First, the rural-urban digital divide, which translates to women in rural areas being less likely to own mobile phones, due to lower broadband penetration in rural areas.
Second, is the income based digital divide between households, that prevents equal access to digital technologies. For example, each GB of data costs low-income households (earning less than US$2/day) in the country 3 percent of their monthly income versus 0.2 percent for middle-income households (earning US $10–$20 per day).
Lastly, regressive social norms, and discrimination at the household level, that prevents women from enjoying equitable access to digital devices, and technology, and that further exacerbates the gender divide. For example, while some rural communities have banned women’s mobile phone usage, others view internet use as ‘immoral’. This can be corroborated from another report by C3India and Digital Empowerment Foundation, which found that 611 girls out of the 2,600 indicated that the “protective nature” of the family limited their free access to the phone. Parents offered reasons such as “phones are not safe”, “waste of time”, “may harm her eyes”, or that the daughter “may misuse it”.5Girls were allowed the phone only to attend online classes whereas no such restrictions were imposed on the boys.
A confluence of these factors has meant women being excluded from the digital economy, especially in relation to accessing schooling, skilling, entrepreneurship and work.
Leaving No Woman Behind
As phones increase in availability, women’s mobile phone access, which remains higher than internet access, can be explored as an entry point to digital access. While some research points to ownership of a mobile phone may necessarily aiding women’s empowerment, it can definitely help reduce information poverty, help expand support networks, as well as access to different services, for them to effectively participate in the economy.
According to a report by the International Monetary Fund, female workers in low-skill clerical, and sales jobs are at the most risk of being replaced by automation in the developed world. In India, automation of housework and emergence of the ‘gig’ economy can further marginalise women workers in India With automation giving rise to a new class of jobs that require digital literacy, it is important that India develops proper skill development programmes targeted to women to be able to get these jobs.Digital literacy should therefore be a priority for policymakers in order to end digital discrimination based on gender.
It is also important to implement policies that overcome prevailing socio-cultural norms for technology to be a tool for empowerment.
“The gender gap in education, burden of housework, lack of decision-making powers and restrictions to mobility, hinder women’s digital, financial and labor market inclusion. Women must already be empowered with basic education, freedom of movement, and rights to be able to access and engage productively with technology,” scholars Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami say.
Finally, policy measures aimed at women’s empowerment, and those aimed at technological innovation must not operate within silos. At present, policy around digitalization tends to be fragmented. In order to be effective, it is important that policy interventions be linked with other aspects for for financial inclusion,social welfare and protection