Ashutosh Kumar & Ananya Gupta
NEW DELHI: India’s progress in closing the gender gap in smartphone access and mobile internet use has stalled, especially in the past year, according to GSMA findings. The body said there has been negligible growth in the proportion of women using mobile internet and almost no growth in smartphone ownership.
“In India you see the prices are affordable, they are low, like 10 dollars, but for a low income [citizens], it can still be priceless. But there are also issues surrounding social norms in India, where it doesn’t always seem acceptable for women to own a phone or go online. Security concerns are also a barrier,” Claire Sibthorpe, head of Connected Women and Connected Society at GSMA had said, answering a question from ETTelecom at a media briefing.
“Among women in India, affordability is a challenge and some of these social norms are that they don’t find it acceptable or appropriate for a woman to have a smartphone or go online,” explains Sibthorpe.
In comparison, the proportion of Indian males using mobile internet over the same period has grown from 45% to 51%, according to the findings, and smartphone ownership has increased from 41% to 49%.
On a larger scale, GSMA found that from 2017 to 2020 there was a rapid growth in the number of people using mobile internet. “Women grew disproportionately faster than men, narrowing the overall gender gap for mobile internet in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) year over year, from 25% in 2017 to 15% in 2020.”
In the LMICs, an additional 59 million women started using mobile internet from 2020 to 2021. However, this increase is much smaller than in previous years and lower than the growth for men in the same period, it notes.
“As a result, the gender gap in mobile internet use in LMICs has widened slightly to 16% by 2021, meaning that women are now 16% less likely than men to use mobile internet,” the report said, adding that this equals 264 million fewer women than men using mobile internet. The top three barriers to mobile ownership for both men and women are affordability, literacy and digital skills, and safety and security, respectively.
The London-based company recommends that there is an explicit need to address women’s needs and challenges in the design and implementation of mobile-related products, services, interventions and policies.
It pointed out that targeted intervention from industry, policy makers, the development community and other stakeholders is needed to ensure that women are no longer left behind, as well as to focus more on gender equality and reaching out to women at organizational and policy levels, among other measures to address the mobile gender gap.