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The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2023
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Nadia Jeffrie et al.

London: GSMA; Ipsos (2023), 70 pp.

"1. More women in low- and middle-income countries are using mobile internet than ever before, but their rate of adoption has slowed for the second year in a row. While 61% of women across these countries now use mobile internet, only 60 million women started using mobile internet in 2022 compared t ... o 75 million in 2021. Men’s rate of adoption also slowed in 2022, highlighting that progress on digital inclusion for all has stalled across low- and middle-income countries. 2. The gender gap in mobile internet remains relatively unchanged – women in low- and middle-income countries are 19% less likely than men to use it, which translates into around 310 million fewer women than men. This year there have been no significant changes in the mobile internet gender gap in any region, including South Asia where there have been notable changes in the past few years. 3. To close the mobile internet gender gap by 2030 across low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 810 million women need to adopt it. This is equivalent to 100 million women a year, on average. However, if the gender gap remains unchanged, forecasts suggest that only 360 million more women will adopt mobile internet by 2030. 4. There are 900 million women in low- and middle-income countries who are still not using mobile internet, almost two-thirds of whom live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Women in these regions remain the least likely to use mobile internet compared to men, with gender gaps of 41% and 36%, respectively. 5. Women were more likely than men to report they had reduced their use of mobile internet in 2022, especially those who live in rural areas and are less educated. Across all survey countries, women also tend to use their mobile phones for a narrower range of activities and use mobile internet less regularly than men. 6. The gender gap in smartphone ownership has stalled for the second year in a row, and women in low- and middle-income countries are 17% less likely than men to own a smartphone. This translates into around 250 million fewer women than men. While more men and women own a smartphone than ever before, the rate of adoption for both has slowed down slightly. 55% of women now own a smartphone compared to 67% of men. However, once women own a smartphone, their awareness and use of mobile internet is almost on par with men." (Key findings) more

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Hold the Phone! A Cross-National Analysis of Women's Education, Mobile Phones, and HIV Infections in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, 1990–2018

Aarushi Bhandari, Rebekah Burroway

Social Science & Medicine, issue 334 (2023), pp. 116217 ff.

"Despite remarkable progress in the fight against HIV, the number of new infections remains unacceptably high, epidemics continue to grow in certain communities, and therefore AIDS continues to be one of the deadliest pandemics of our times. This study analyzes the rate of new HIV infections over al ... more

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The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2022

Matthew Shanahan et al.

London: GSMA (2022), 68 pp.

"1. Women’s uptake of mobile internet in lowand middle-income countries continues to increase, but the rate of adoption has slowed. Across low- and middle-income countries, 60 per cent of women now use mobile internet. Only 59 million additional women in low-and middle-income countries started usi ... more

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Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2022
Quick Overview

Geneva: ITU (2022), iv, 26 pp.

"As the world welcomes its 8 billionth inhabitant, an estimated 5.3 billion people – roughly 66 per cent of the global population – are using the Internet. Yet some 2.7 billion people worldwide remain totally offline, with universal connectivity still a distant prospect in least developed countr ... more

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Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2021

Geneva: ITU (2021), iv, 26 pp.

"An estimated 4.9 billion people are using the Internet in 2021, according to latest estimates in this 2021 edition of Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures. That means that roughly 63 per cent of the world’s population is now online – an increase of 17 per cent – with almost 800 mi ... llion people estimated to have come online since 2019. Internet penetration increased more than 20 per cent on average in Africa, in Asia and the Pacific, and in the UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs). With most of the 17 Global Goals thrust sharply off-track by the force of the emergency, the pandemic has highlighted – and exacerbated – the crippling cost of digital exclusion. Achieving universal meaningful connectivity has become a matter of the utmost urgency if we are to meet the SDGs by the end of the decade. We cannot close the digital divide if we cannot measure it. And we cannot connect the unconnected if we do not know who they are, where they live, and why they remain offline – nor can we measure the success of our policies to bridge the gap . While the access divide is close to being bridged, with 95 per cent of the world’s population now living within range of a mobile broadband network, important blind spots remain. Close to 30 per cent of Africa’s rural population still lacks mobile broadband coverage. And even though the vast majority of the world’s people could access the Internet through mobile broadband, less than two thirds actually do. The statistics reveal a connectivity ‘grand canyon’ separating the digitally empowered from the digitally excluded, with 96 per cent of the 2.9 billion still offline living in the developing world. Drilling down to country level also affords a more nuanced picture. Location plays a big part: our figures reveal that the share of Internet users in urban areas is twice as high as in rural areas. There is also a generational gap – 71 per cent of the world’s population aged 15-24 is using the Internet, compared with 57 per cent of all other age groups. And gender remains a factor: globally, 62 per cent of men are using the Internet compared with 57 per cent of women. While that digital gender divide has been narrowing across all regions, women remain digitally marginalized in many of the world’s poorest countries, where online access could potentially have its most powerful effect." (Foreword) more

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Connecting Empowerment: How Social Network Expansion in Women’s Collectives Helps Bridge the Gender Digital Divide

Eric Rice, Sara Chamberlain

London: BBC Media Action (2021), 9 pp.

"This report, based on research conducted with women's empowerment collectives (self help groups, co-operatives, rights-based groups, trade unions) in India in late 2019, explores the relationship between the expansion of women's social networks in collectives, their growing empowerment, and their a ... more

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The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2021

Isabelle Carboni et al.

London: GSMA (2021), 65 pp.

"1. Women’s access to mobile internet continues to increase across low- and middle-income countries, while mobile ownership remains relatively flat: 83 per cent of women own a mobile phone and 58 per cent use mobile internet. Women are also more likely than men to access the internet exclusively o ... more

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Media Practices and Changing African Socialities: Non-Media-Centric Perspectives

Jo Helle-Valle, Ardis Storm-Mathisen (eds.)

New York; Oxford: Berghahn (2020), 250 pp.

"Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on ... more

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The Digital Exclusion of Women with Disabilities: A Study of Seven Low- and Middle-Income Countries

London: GSMA (2020), 43 pp.

"1. Women with disabilities have among the lowest rates of mobile and smartphone ownership. In most countries, ownership gaps are widest between men without disabilities and women with disabilities. Even in countries where the mobile gender gap is small or nonexistent, there is still a disability ga ... more

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Reaching 50 Million Women with Mobile: A Practical Guide

Dominica Lindsey et al.

London: GSMA; Altai Consulting (2020), 41 pp.

"The persistent gender gap in mobile access and use is already well documented, as are the significant benefits of closing it. Across low- and middle-income countries today, women are eight per cent less likely than men to own a mobile phone, 20 per cent less likely to use mobile internet and 33 per ... more

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Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures

Geneva: ITU (2020), 17 pp.

"Facts and Figures 2020 reveals that people in rural areas continue to face greater challenges than people in urban areas in terms of remaining connected during the lockdown, especially in developing economies. Large swathes of the rural landscape are still not covered by mobile broadband networks, ... more

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Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2019

Geneva: ITU (2019), ii, 11 pp.

"Welcome to the first of ITU’s Measuring Digital Development series of statistical and analytical publications that replace the annual Measuring the Information Society Report. Facts and figures 2019 offers a snapshot of the most important ICT indicators, including estimates for the current year. ... more

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Connected Women: The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2018
Top Insights

Oliver Rowntree

London: GSMA (2018), 28 pp.

"In low- and middle-income countries women are 10% less likely than men to own a mobile phone. Over 1.2 billion women do not use mobile internet. There is a significant gender gap in mobile usage - particularly for more transformational services. Women in South Asia are 26% less likely to own a mobi ... more

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Baseline Report on Women's Rights Online Issues in Ghana

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) (2017), 31 pp.

"The study found that among women, access to and use of the internet is highly dependent on the type of mobile device used and on level of education. Connecting with friends and family, entertainment and education emerged as the main reasons why the female respondents used the internet. Unreliable y ... more

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Mobile Phone for Empowerment? Global Nannies in Paris

Youna Kim

Media, Culture & Society, volume 38, issue 4 (2016), pp. 525-539

"Feminization of migration has emerged as a common livelihood strategy to alleviate poverty and escape difficult socioeconomic, cultural, and familial situations. Mobile phones have become the most crucial and pervasive communication device that enables migrants to be simultaneously mobile and conne ... more

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Situated Empowerment: Mobile Phones Practices Among Market Women in Kampala

Jakob Svensson, Caroline Wamala Larsson

Mobile Media & Communication, volume 4, issue 2 (2016), pp. 205-220

"In this article we depart from studies on empowerment and its intersections with the informal economy and market women in the Global South and promises of the mobile phone in so-called developing regions. Conducting an explorative study among market women in Kampala, the aim is to examine what role ... more

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Use of Mobile Phones by the Rural Poor: Gender Perspectives from Selected Asian Countries

Gerard Sylvester (ed.)

Bangkok: FAO; LIRNEasia; International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (2016), xii, 51 pp.

"A qualitative study was conducted in Indonesia and Sri Lanka to understand the varied perceptions on the use and ownership of mobile phones [...] The study was conducted amongst four groups of people (urban men, urban women, rural men, and rural women) in each of two countries. The study found that ... more

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Bridging the Gender Gap: Mobile Access and Usage in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Connected Women 2015

Shireen Santosham, Dominica Lindsey

GSMA; Altai Consulting (2015), 128 pp.

"Women on average are 14% less likely to own a mobile phone than men, which translates into 200 million fewer women than men owning mobile phones. Women in South Asia are 38% less likely to own a phone than men, highlighting that the gender gap in mobile phone ownership is wider in certain parts of ... more

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Mobile Value-Added Services and the Economic Empowerment of Women: The Case of Usaha Wanita in Indonesia

Tian Cai, Han Ei Chew, Mark R. Levy

Mobile Media & Communication, volume 3, issue 2 (2015), pp. 267-285

"Mobile value-added services (MVAS) represent a growing collaboration between the private sector and the development community. In this paper, we examine one such MVAS, the Nokia Usaha Wanita service running on the Nokia Life+ platform in Indonesia, and we assess its impact as an innovative means fo ... more

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Baseline Study Report on Women Access to Information Through Mobile and Media Communication Services

Liberia Women Media Action Committee (LIWOMAC); United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) (2014), 38 pp.

"Out of a total 400 participants, 374 respondents, representing 93.5%, know how to use cell phones, while 26, representing 6.5%, have no knowledge whatsoever about cell phone usage. This finding is indicative of a relatively high knowledge of mobile phones utility. The result also indicates that Lon ... more

The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2023 Top Insights

Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2022 Quick Overview

Connected Women: The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2018 Top Insights

The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2023
Top Insights

Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2022
Quick Overview

Connected Women: The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2018
Top Insights