This document discusses the digital gender gap and efforts to address it. It finds that worldwide, 12% fewer women access the internet than men, rising to 3% in least developed countries. Factors like age, location, cost, and safety impact women's access. Organizations like ITU, UN Women, and GSMA are working to increase affordable access, safety, and relevant content for women. Education and employment opportunities also need to improve to bridge the digital gender divide.

1. WOMEN AND MOBILE: BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP
GSMA CAPACITY BUILDING WAM FEBRUARY 2018

2. BRIDGING THE DIGITAL GENDER GAP
• To bridge this digital gender gap, we need greater investment across the board.
• We need to build digital literacy skills into education systems, to overcome
inequalities in access, and to integrate gender perspectives into all strategies and
plans.
• To collect sharper data in order to design targeted policies for relevant services,
applications and content.
• Worldwide, there is a gender gap of 12 percent in male and female access to the
Internet.
• This rises to almost 3 percent in Least Developed Countries

3. FACTORS IN THE DIGITAL GENDER DIVIDE
• There is an urban-rural divide related to the gender gap in Internet use. In rural areas, the gender gap is higher
in high-income countries (9.4%, compared to 7.5% in low- and middle-income countries). This trend is somewhat
reversed in urban areas, where the gap is slightly higher (at 6.6%) in low- and middle-income countries, than in high-
income countries (6.3%). While this data on urban-rural Internet use is only available for 16 out of the 69 countries
covered in the ITU’s dataset, these findings on the urban gap are consistent with other research. For example, the
Web Foundation’s Women’s Rights Online research surveyed urban poor communities in ten low- and middle-
income countries and found that women were nearly 50% less likely to access the Internet than men in the same
communities.
• Age is also a factor in the digital gender gap. The digital gender gap increases as age increases, and is more
significant in low- and middle-income countries. Among 15-24 year old's, the gender gap is 2.9% in low- and
middle-income countries. However, there is a negative gap for this age group in high-income countries, where
Internet use among women is slightly higher (by 0.5%) than men. The gender gap in Internet use grows among the
25-74 age group across all countries, but is higher again for low- and middle-income countries (7.7%) compared to
high-income countries (3.5%). When we look at the age group 75 and above, the gender gap becomes significantly
larger, with an average gap of 45.8% across all countries. Again, these findings are supported by the Women’s Rights
Online research which also shows the gender gap increasing with age in urban poor communities.

4. BARRIERS PREVENTING WOMEN FROM USING
AND OWNING MOBILE PHONE
• Cost
• Network quality and coverage
• Safety and harassment
• Operator/agent trust
• Technical literacy and confidence

5. MEASURES TO ADDRESS THE BARRIERS
FACED BY WOMEN
• Affordable access: improved understanding of affordability issues; innovating to
reduce the cost of devices and services; improving network coverage, capacity
and quality; and providing public access facilities
• Addressing threats that prevent access and use: researching and
understanding threats; increasing awareness of threats and how they can be
addressed or reduced; developing safety applications and services; and
strengthening protection measures and reporting procedures.
• Relevant content, apps and services: building awareness; developing relevant
content and services; and consulting and engaging women.

6. WHO IS ADDRESSING THE GENDER DIGITAL
DIVIDE?
• ITU
• UN Women
• GSMA
• WEF
• UNESCO

7. HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS OF THE GENDER
DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS
• Censorship, the internet has become a critical space for women to access
relevant information, which is often unavailable to them offline due to social and
cultural norms –for example, information on sexual health and reproductive
rights.
• Violence against women online, Acts of gender-based violence that are
committed, abetted or aggravated, in part or fully, by the use of ICTs such as
phones, the internet, social media platforms and email are violations of women’s
fundamental human rights. They also act as a significant barrier to women’s use
of the internet

8. ACTION PLANS TO ADDRESS DIGITAL GENDER
DIVIDE
• Education- there is a great need to ensure that girls are enrolled into secondary
school to further their education. Most of the drop out in Africa is due to lack of
provision of sanitary towels for girls. Therefore miss an opportunity to participate in
school activities and access to ICT services due to illiteracy.
• Employment- there is a shortage of female representation in the senior management
and executive management in the ICT Sector. For instance CEOs for Mobile operator
in South Africa are all male.

9. CONCLUSION
• Women are less likely to complete their studies, in other words their high schools
and tertiary, due to many reasons such as getting pregnant.
• Access to mobile by women and girls remains the biggest challenge across the
globe, especially in low income countries and rural areas.
• Of particular importance is to encourage policy makers and private sector to
engage in issues that will bridge the digital gender gap that is affecting women
and girls and therefor hindering full participation and access to ICT services.

10. REFERENCES
• GSMA Connected Women The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2018 retrieved from
https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/programmes/connected-women/the-mobile-gender-gap-
report-2018
• Big Data and the well-being of Women and Girls, 2017 retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/blog/big-data-
filling-gender-data-gaps-and-pushing-us-closer-gender-equality
• UN Gender Mainstreaming: An Overview retrieved from
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/e65237.pdf
• https://webfoundation.org/2016/10/digging-into-data-on-the-gender-digital-divide/
• http://broadbandcommission.org/Documents/publications/WorkingGroupDigitalGenderDivide-
report2017.pdf
• ITU Action Plan of Plan to close the digital gender gap retrieved from https://www.itu.int/en/action/gender-
equality/Documents/ActionPlan.pdf