Mobile's Gender Gap in India

In India, 114 million more men than women have cellphones. 

That represents more than half the total world-wide gap of around 200 million between men and women who possess phones, according to GSMA, an international cellphone-industry group.

In India, millions use smartphones to find jobs, bank, study, order train tickets, interact with the government and more. Offline options require freedom of movement not available for many women, and extra time and cost in traveling, standing in lines and filling out forms.

“Mobile phones, especially smartphones, are going to be the biggest challenge to achieving gender equity,” said Osama Manzar, founder of the nonprofit Digital Empowerment Foundation, which helps marginalized groups get access to technology. “Denying them to women means lost opportunity for women and the economy.”

India has one of the most-skewed sex ratios in the world, with men significantly outnumbering women, the result of selective abortion, infanticide and neglect. Girls suffer disproportionately from malnutrition and are less likely to be in school. Families invest their resources in sons.

In parts of rural India, village councils, which effectively dictate community norms, have issued decrees barring unmarried women from possessing cellphones. Even in the fast-modernizing cities of the world’s largest democracy, men routinely prevent women in their families from getting phones.

Fathers and husbands say phones could lead to sexual promiscuity, or at the very least give women a reputation for moral laxity. They also argue that money is better spent on boys, and that technology, like education, is wasted on women who will eventually be married off to another family.