Girls accessing technology at home during the pandemic / Photograph by Dana Schmidt
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India's digital gender divide: It starts at home
Patriarchal societies like India still restrict the use of technology for women and girls, particularly those from underprivileged and marginalised backgrounds. This phenomenon overlaps with the socio-cultural norms that control women’s autonomy and ambitions. Unless this digital gender divide is addressed, our country’s aggressive digitisation will not make real progress.
Let us think about the world we live in. The gender inequality that persists around us also replicates in the digital world. There is a glaring gap in women's digital adoption compared to men's that prevail across all social and economic groups in our country. This is the digital gender divide. To make matters worse, we do not talk about it much.
India is predicted to overtake the US as a 'smartphone superpower' by 2025, only behind China, with 1.1 billion smartphone connections. However, connectivity does not equal opportunity unless digital literacy barriers are addressed. “Women in India are 15% less likely to own a phone and 33% less likely to use mobile data when compared to male users,” states data from The 2021 Mobile Gender Gap Report. The reasons constraining their digital access and skill are poverty, higher illiteracy of women, low confidence levels in using technology, and safety concerns.
Woman takes photo with a cellphone at a community meeting in Aurangabad, Maharashtra / Photograph by Simone D. McCourtie
Gendered use of digital devices
The 2021-2023 BBC Media Report's findings show women users using their phones for lesser complicated services like making and receiving phone calls. With low digital literacy, they are less confident performing a new task.
For example, my grandmother, who hails from Rajahmundry, a small town in Andhra Pradesh, still goes to the bank for transactions. When I visited her during the holidays, I tried teaching her how to make cashless payments on GooglePay. She was pretty hesitant to enter her card details on the app.
Therefore, it is imperative to take on a gender-intentional approach to tackle this issue. Before drafting effective interventions to promote digital literacy for women, it is crucial first to consider their 'specific' digital literacy needs.
Intertwined with patriarchy
Patriarchy runs deep in our roots and reflects workforce participation, a key indicator of our development. The BBC’s report's findings also show usage of social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Youtube is still heavily skewed towards male users.
Not just this, access to digital devices and the internet is often restricted and closely monitored by "gatekeepers," who are usually the men (husbands, in-laws and other family members). They give negative responses such as "waste of time,” "unnecessary expenditure" and "security concerns."
Additionally, women often fall prey to corruption from "bad actors on the internet." Most women users who face online gender-based violence do not seek family support and resort to limiting their phone use and self-censorship instead of seeking family or legal aid. Data from Web Foundation's 2020 report states that 25% of young women harassed online choose to do nothing about it, citing reasons such as "not worth reporting" and "authorities won't care."
To bridge this gap, digital literacy initiatives need to actively address cyber safety. Also, our government must ensure that legal frameworks for data privacy and safeguarding women online should be put in place using a gender lens to offer protection for women and men.
Addressing the access barriers
In today's world, technology supports female empowerment. It can only come alive when it is rooted in the needs of the society it aims to engage and serve. Increased access to digital technology supports greater digital literacy, providing more opportunities for learning, skill development and better awareness of online risks.
Awareness programs for parents of the girl child may envisage positive perceptions of the internet and technology. It will help them understand how to support their children to stay safe online instead of viewing the internet as a dangerous place.
The rural-urban divide
National Family Health Survey (NFHS) usually contains data on socio-economic and health indicators. But for the first time, in November 2021, it released data on internet access. According to it, the digital divide grows starker between rural and urban women. 51.8% of urban women have accessed the internet compared to only 24.6% of rural women.
The survey also found that Kerala, Goa, and Northeastern states have the narrowest rural-urban divide and the widest in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. Setting up community resource centres and internet kiosks close to women's homes for them to access necessary digital literacy training can help reduce this gap. Tata Trusts’-Google initiative's Internet Saathi was launched in 2015. Since then, the program has touched 30 million rural women by providing them with affordable phones and helping them use these digital devices in their local languages. Hence, I firmly believe that change will come sooner or later, but it is in our hands to accelerate the pace of progress.
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