Annotations
(15/04/2026, 15:05:13)
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“Social norms that shape expectations of women’s roles within groups can cause gender inequality in employment to persist, even in high information online environments.” (Archibong et al., 2026, p. 1)
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Annotations
(15/04/2026, 12:54:37)
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“The assessment reveals that women and girls in SSA face persistent barriers to developing and applying digital skills, with particularly pronounced gaps in access to internet-enabled devices, digital learning opportunities, and advanced training in STEM-related fields. These disparities are further compounded by prevailing gender norms and limited exposure to female role models in the digital economy. Across most indicators, SSA lags both comparator regions and global averages, underscoring the urgency of narrowing the divide.” (Voufo et al., 2025, pp. -)
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Annotations
(15/04/2026, 12:19:18)
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“The widest disability gaps in mobile internet adoption were found in surveyed countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, with adoption levels ranging from 6% to 49% for persons with disabilities, as compared with 23% to 74% for non-disabled persons. 2. Persons with disabilities have lower levels of mobile ownership compared to nondisabled persons.” (GSMA, 2025, p. 8)
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“many people, particularly persons with disabilities, own and use a SIM card and rely on borrowed and shared devices to access mobile services as they do not own a handset. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, Kenya and Tanzania, where a significant proportion of persons with disabilities—19%, 15% and 15% respectively—own a SIM but do not own a handset. By comparison, this figure is 5% for non-disabled persons in Indonesia, 7% in Kenya and 4% in Tanzania” (GSMA, 2025, p. 19)
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Annotations
(15/04/2026, 11:52:47)
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“Under the Sanchar Kranti Yojana (SKY) program, the state government of Chhattisgarh distributed over 2 million smartphones to rural women in 2018. The government ensured all program villages had LTE (4G) coverage, and all phones received 1 GB of free data each month for six months to bring women and their families online. The program was gender-targeted, with women receiving the phones” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 3)
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“SKY reversed the gender gap in smartphone ownership and views on the appropriateness of women’s phone usage liberalize among both genders. Yet, the program failed to fully achieve its goal of closing digital gender gaps. Specifically, while smartphone use increased for both genders, men reported larger gains, such that gender gaps in usage actually worsened. Some of this worsening likely reflected women’s inability to retain control over the new phone: Within a month of receiving smartphones, and despite 98% of eligible women reporting SKY phone receipt, approximately 40 percent of women no longer claimed they owned a smartphone.” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 4)
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“Without a clear rationale and means to maintain control of digital assets in the household, delivering female-targeted phones was insufficient to close digital gender gaps” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 5)
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“a large-scale state-sponsored program in India that aimed to close digital” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 1)
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“gender gaps by transferring free smartphones to women while constructing 4G towers to bring rural areas online. The program was well implemented, reversing gender gaps in smartphone ownership in the short run. However, many women lost ownership and gender gaps in use quickly worsened as men made use of the new phones.” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 2)
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“Our findings suggest that in gender-unequal, resource-constrained settings, addressing affordability alone may not close digital gender gaps” (Barboni et al., 2024, p. 2)
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