An article from Wall Street Journal titled “Why the Vast Majority of Women in India Will Never Own a Smartphone”, looks at the gender inequality of India as a function of lack of access to mobile phones and the internet. Their findings tells us why we must continue efforts at corporate and governmental levels to make women a key beneficiary group of Digital 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, 28% of females have cellphones compared with 43% of men, one of the largest gender gaps in the world, according to GSMA. That compares to a gap of just 1 percentage point in China.”



“In India around 30% of internet users are female, according to estimates by the Internet and Mobile Association of India. A government survey in 2014 found that only around 9% of females surveyed knew how to do an internet search or send email on a phone or computer, compared with more than 16% of males surveyed.”



“The country has close to three men on Facebook for every woman, according to consultancy We Are Social. In most other parts of the world the ratio is about one to one.”



This is despite there being less men than women in India.



“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.”



Part of the reason are cultural barriers.



“In parts of rural India, village councils, which effectively dictate community norms, have issued decrees barring unmarried women from possessing cellphones.”



Mr. Balbir is a person interviewed in the article. ““If a girl is walking on the road playing music on her phone, what will people think? They’ll say she isn’t a decent girl,” he is quoted as saying.



The biggest reason to get women access to information technology is that with women lie the untapped economic potential of India.



“Economists say getting more women into India’s workforce would give the country a much-needed development boost. Women made up only 27% of India’s workforce in 2014, according to the International Labor Organization, down from 36% in 2004."



“Telecom and tech companies say the women locked offline represent a huge pool of potential sales. GSMA estimates that if women owned as many phones as men, it could mean more than $30 billion a year in revenue for phone companies around the world, $3.5 billion of that in India.”