A new report titled ‘Bridging the gender gap: mobile access and usage in low and middle-income countries’ by GSMA reveals that there’s still massive inequality between genders when it comes to mobile access.
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According to the report, a woman is still 21% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. This figure increases to 23% if she lives in Africa, 24% if she lives in the Middle East, and 37% if she lives in South Asia.
“Closing this gender gap would bring the benefits of mobile phones to an additional 300 million women,” the GSMA says. “By extending the benefits of mobile phone ownership to more women, a host of social and economic goals can be advanced”.
This is not the first such report to be released by GSMA. Five years ago it released the ‘Women and Mobile: A global opportunity’ report that highlighted the disparity in mobile phone ownership between men and women in low and middle-income countries. GSMA took a much more positive perspective in that report, suggesting that these disparities make for good penetration into the space where women do not have mobile phones.
The new report examines how many women in low and middle-income countries own mobile phones as well as how intensively they use them, and the barriers to mobile phone adoption and use compared to men.
The findings for this report were based on primary research as well as secondary sources. Primary field research was conducted in 11 countries and included surveys with 11 000 women and men (both mobile phone owners and non-owners). GSMA also held approximately 80 focus group discussions, and interviews with over 120 experts.
Any difference from five years ago?
Sadly but unsurprisingly, there has been very little advancement in affording women access to mobile phones. Of course, now there are a lot more affordable handsets and companies are making these handsets, things are looking better but still not anywhere being equal to men. The report also points out that “a substantial body of knowledge about access and usage of mobile phones has also improved understanding of how women interact with and benefit from this life-enhancing mobile technology”.
This is true to some extent but not all mobile devices cater for women’s use. With the introduction of apps, it has never been easier to make women friendly mobile phones, introducing panic buttons, and pregnancy test apps
But progress has been made. In Mumbai, India, in Sion Hospital, a service called mMitra was launched in December 2013. mMitra is aimed at bridging communication and counselling gap in care for pregnant women and recent mothers. It sends women registered for mMitra weekly messages on their mobile phones. It calls pregnant women at every week during their pregnancy and if they miss a call, the hospital finds other means to reach them to make they are okay.
It is projects like these that enable mobile to be of optimal use for women.
The report notes that the findings from the report indicate that ”the gender gap in mobile ownership and use is driven by a complex set of socio-economic and cultural barriers negatively affecting women”.
Key findings in this report include:
- Today, over 3-billion people in low and middle-income countries do not own mobile phones, and most of them 1.7 billion are estimated to be female. 10 Nearly two-thirds of unconnected women live in the South Asia and East Asia & Pacific regions.
- 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 the world.
- Even when women own mobile phones, there is a significant gender gap in mobile phone usage preventing them from reaping the full benefits of mobile phone ownership. Women report using phones less frequently and intensively than men, especially for more sophisticated services such as mobile internet. In most countries, fewer women than men who own phones report using messaging and data services beyond voice.
- The top five barriers to women owning and using mobile phones from a customer perspective are cost, network quality and coverage, security and harassment, operator/agent trust, and technical literacy and confidence. Social norms and disparities between men and women in terms of education and income influence women’s access to and use of mobile technology, and often contribute to women experiencing barriers to mobile phone ownership and use more acutely than men.
- Addressing the gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage can deliver substantial socio-economic benefits for women, the mobile industry, and the economy: • Ensuring women in low- and middle-income countries own and use mobile phones on par with men could unlock an estimated $170 billion market opportunity for the mobile industry in the next five years and contribute to economic growth in these regions.
- Mobile phones deliver substantial socio-economic benefits for women. Mobile phones are valued by women as a tool that enhances their lives, making them feel more autonomous and connected, able to access new education and employment opportunities, and save time and money.
- At least 68% in every country reported they feel safer (or would feel safer) with a mobile phone, 58% said they felt more (or would feel more) autonomous and independent.”
Top barriers to mobile phone ownership and usage for women.
“Women tend to experience barriers more acutely than men due to underlying social norms that influence women’s roles, status, empowerment, and access to education and income in society,” the report says.
These barriers affect women from areas of society where they have less financial independence and autonomy. This means they have no financial freedom to purchase mobile phones and even those who have mobile phones tend not to maximise its usages because they do not have the means to access data and airtime.
The ways to get around these barriers, the report suggests, include making handsets more affordable. This of course will not address the issue of patriarchy. Many men, it seems, believe that women should not own mobile phones. Even if the price were to drop they still would not buy their wives, daughters mobile phones.
Recommendations
The report not only diagnosis the problem but it also makes recommendations. The recommendations are for mobile phone manufacturers, service providers, policy makers and donors and the development community, Academics and research organisations.
Manufacturers
- Bring lower-cost handsets to customers, designing solutions based on local market handset dynamics (e.g., microloans, repair services, mobile marketplace, and partnerships with low-priced handset manufacturers).
- Build on the perception of mobile phones as a tool for increasing women’s safety by introducing ‘safety’ services (e.g., to help women alert contacts in an emergency), call-blocking services, and tools to refill credit privately and remotely.
- Invest in consumer insights research to better deliver services that meet the needs of women.
- Integrate features into handset and service design that meet the needs of women who are less literate, less familiar with mobile, and use more basic handsets (e.g., consider IVR, icons, pictures, comic-style stories, comprehensible terminology, and clear user menus with fewer steps).
Service providers - Introduce more creative and transparent pricing to appeal to women’s price sensitivity, call patterns, and daily routines (e.g., creative tariff plans, innovative data packages, low-denomination scratch-cards, data pricing that is bite-sized or on demand, emergency credit services).
- Improve network quality and coverage to reduce dropped calls and expand into rural areas.
- Track mobile access and usage by gender systematically in the subscriber base or through improved market research.
- Track women’s uptake versus men’s, as well as usage and experience of services.
Policy-makers
- Integrate gender into national broadband plans and track mobile access and usage by gender, along with other ICTs, in national statistics databases.
- Ensure women are protected on mobiles and online by launching awareness campaigns and developing legal and policy frameworks to address harassment over mobile phones and mobile internet.
Donors and the development community
- Provide funding for programmes to address the gender gap in ownership and usage in low- and middle-income countries.
- Encourage the collection of gender data at the national and international level by funding, providing technical assistance, and facilitating partnerships.
- Fund research in low- and middle-income countries on women’s mobile use versus men’s, in addition to mobile access, and share findings to lead global advocacy efforts.
Academics and research organisations
- Expand research in low and middle-income countries on women’s mobile use versus men’s, in addition to mobile access, and share findings with policy-makers and industry stakeholders, especially for mobile internet, security and harassment, network quality and coverage, technical literacy and confidence, and most-values products and services.
From this report it is clear where the prohibitions to women’s access and usage of mobile phones is and the recommendations make it clear that the different stakeholders need to work together to solve the problem.
The debates about inequality in tech need to, as necessary as they are, move beyond the concerns about women in tech not being recognised or afforded the same opportunities as men and be about giving women, especially in poor and patriarchal communities, all around the world access to mobile phones.
Image: Meena Kadri via Flickr.
