Digital revolution and the gender divide
Factors affecting mobile phone use in India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20509878 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lina Sonne (0000-0002-4089-4454, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 471-491 |
| Publication date | 2025-02-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Information Communication & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-118X • E-ISSN: 1468-4462 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369118x.2024.2420034 |
| OpenAlex | W4404148121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 24 |
As the world digitises, being able to access and use a mobile phone is important in order to be able to participate fully in day-to-day life, accessing digital services and online information. While mobile phone handsets and cheap data plans are now ubiquitous in India, women’s access to and use of mobile phones is significantly more limited than that of men. The availability of the technology is therefore not the only factor affecting women’s access and use of mobile phones. This paper proposes a novel framework operating at three levels – individual, family and community levels, to understand the factors that affect women’s access to and use of mobile phones, and provides a snapshot of mobile phone access and use of low-income women in India based on 60 structured interviews across six states. We find that women’s mobile phone use is often constrained, based on personal factors – confidence to use a phone or adequate digital literacy; family-level factors – permission to use the phone, monitoring of phone use and community-level factors – socio-cultural norms around appropriate type and place of use. This paper contributes to a significant gap in the literature on digitisation and women’s access and use of mobile phones in India. It highlights that while the digital revolution holds great promise, the use of mobile phones is often constrained for women
Digital divide · Information and Communications Technology · Internet privacy · Media studies · Mobile phone · Sociology · Telecommunications · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Gender Studies · ICT Impact and Policies · ICT in Developing Communities · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development
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| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |