Unit 4.1. Women’s exclusion from connectivity architectures

4.1.1. Overview: Why connectivity is a frontier policy issue

The Internet has intertwined with, and transformed, all domains of life – social, economic and political. Online communication and networking platforms have opened up new avenues for individual expression, forging networks of support, and building open knowledge cultures. Just think of how Facebook and WhatsApp have transformed political participation; or of how spaces such as Wikipedia have significantly expanded access to information and knowledge resources. The digital economy has restructured production and distribution on a global scale, opening up new opportunities for enterprise and employment. Virtual work (Valenduc and Vendramin 2016)1 and the flexibility and autonomy it offers helps individuals overcome mobility barriers in participating in the labour market. Governments are going ‘digital-by-default’, through online modalities for citizen interaction. It is increasingly clear that public authorities can use connectivity creatively to bring efficiency, effectiveness and greater responsiveness to all state-citizen interactions. As Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of expression, observed in his 2011 report (La Rue 2011)2, the Internet is a catalyst of socio-economic development and a critical enabler of human rights. Access to digital technologies and the Internet are hence vital to ensure that no one is left behind – as highlighted by Goal 5b and Goal 9c of Agenda 2030 (United Nations 2015)3.

Women’s empowerment presupposes access to the Internet and Information and Communication Technologies. Especially for women, being connected and having access to digitalised services and e-participation avenues can directly contribute to the enjoyment of full economic, social and political citizenship. Unfortunately, the majority of the world’s women are excluded from connectivity and its benefits. This reinforces and perpetuates women’s socio-economic marginalisation and gender inequality.

Bringing women everywhere the benefits of connectivity, and making connectivity architectures gender responsive is thus a frontier policy issue that needs urgent attention.

4.1.2. discusses the global gender digital divide and the reasons for women’s exclusion from connectivity and its benefits.

4.1.3. will elaborate upon specific strategies for the design of gender-responsive connectivity architectures.

 

4.1.2. Understanding the global gender digital divide

1. The access divide

Over two-thirds of the global population live in an area that is covered by a mobile broadband network. The costs of ICT devices and services are going down steadily. Despite this, a significant proportion of the world’s women are not yet connected.

About 55.1% of women globally are excluded from the benefits of connectivity (ITU 2017)4.

The proportion of men using the Internet is higher than the proportion of women using the Internet in two-thirds of countries worldwide (ITU 2017)5. The global Internet user gender gap – the difference in the Internet penetration rates among the male and female population, relative to Internet penetration rates among men – is 11.6% (ITU 2017)6.

79.9% of women in developed countries are accessing the Internet, as against  37.5% in developing countries and a mere 14.1% in Least Developed Countries (ITU 2017)7.

The overlapping of the gender divide in access with the uneven geographies of economic development is not surprising. The level of economic development is a key determinant of country capacity to invest in infrastructure expansion. However, as the ITU’s Measuring the Information Society Report 2016 highlights, there are instances where the country level of ICT infrastructure development is significantly better/worse than what can be projected from its level of national income (ITU 2016a)8. For example, within the developed country bracket, the Republic of Korea has outperformed the USA in achieving near-universal Internet penetration though the latter has a higher GDP. This variance is explained by policy choices, which play a key role in determining the trajectories of Internet expansion and uptake (ITU 2016a)9. The Republic of Korea, unlike the USA, has devoted a lot of energies to developing programmes for ensuring Internet uptake among disadvantaged groups – such as “Development and Supply of IT Assistance Devices”, “Supply of Green PCs of Love” and “Telecommunication Relay Service”, designed for hearing- and speech-impaired people (ITU 2016a)10.

2. The divide in the quality of the connectivity experience

Even when women are able to access Internet infrastructure, their experience of connectivity is not automatically empowering/beneficial. This depends on the quality of the connectivity experience. As policymakers are beginning to recognise, connectivity is an “experience good” (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India 2016)11. What this means is that every individual experiences connectivity differently, and that the only yardstick of quality connectivity can be the extent to which it allows an user to associate with, and make sense of, the online world. In other words, the quality of the connectivity experience is predicated upon the ability to access meaningful and contextually-relevant content. In this regard, some key challenges are detailed below:

2.a. Paucity of local language content: The language divide on the Internet results in a sub-optimal connectivity experience for most users from developing countries (The Guardian)12. Google, which plays a crucial role in enabling users search and find information online, supports searches in only 130 out of the 6000 languages in use today. While it recognises 30 European languages, it does not recognise a single Pacific language – a fact that undoubtedly contributes to the alienation of women who speak these languages, from the online information commons. On Wikipedia, that strives to be a global encyclopedia of all human knowledge, there are huge asymmetries in content in different language editions. The maximum number of entries are in English, German and French. There is almost no content at all, in many Asian languages, making it inaccessible for most marginalised women in the region.

2.b. The North-South divide in access to high-bandwidth, non textual content: Developing countries lag behind developed countries in fixed broadband speeds, and per capita Internet bandwidth. This is exacerbated by the current trend of mobile broadband becoming a substitute for fixed line connections, as mobiles become the preferred medium for Internet access ((ITU 2016a)13. Per capita bandwidth is 140 kbit/s per inhabitant in developed countries, while it is 53 kbit/s per inhabitant in developing countries, and just 6 kbit/s per inhabitant in LDCs (ITU 2017)14. What this means is that even if they have some kind of access, rural, textually non-literate, women in developing country contexts will be unable to access content requiring high bandwidth, including, video and audio services and applications.

Box 1. The gender digital divide in the Asia-Pacific region: What do we know?

In the Asia-Pacific region, 48.1% of households have Internet access(ITU 2017)15. 39.7% of the female population and 47.9% of the male population access the Internet. The connectivity landscape in this region is highly heterogeneous, which is reflective of the huge disparities in economic development in the region – between the high income economies of Oceania and East Asia and other countries.

The top seven economies in the region have very high levels of ICT infrastructure development, and are world leaders in the ITU’s ICT Development Index 2016. At the same time, it also houses 9 least connected countries (LCCs). The region ranks second-lowest in the world, in terms of availability of per capita Internet bandwidth, at 48 kbit/s per inhabitant (ITU 2017)16.

The gender digital divide in the region fits in with this overall picture, and is very uneven. The Internet user gender gap in the region is 17.1%, higher than the global average of 11.6% (ITU 2017)17.

Also, the study found that with a rise in education levels, women’s confidence in their digital capabilities soars….

There is a major data gap that prevents us from delving deeper into the gender divide in access or in tracing differences in the quality of the connectivity experience of women and men. As the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development (2014) has highlighted, this requires the collection on national level statistics that address the following questions:

  • Where do individuals access the Internet?
  • What is the frequency of use?
  • What activities do individuals undertake on the Internet?
  • What ICT skills do they possess?

Only 27.5% of countries in the region provide data to the ITU, on these areas. And a mere 10 countries produce sex-disaggregated data on ICT access and use (ITU 2017). Getting a fix on the numbers is an important precondition to get to the bottom of the gender digital divide in the Asia-Pacific.

3. Addressing the gender digital divide: the way ahead

Current trends demonstrate that the global gender digital divide is not automatically narrowing with market diffusion, contrary to early expectations in telecommunications policy circles. In 2016, the Broadband Commission highlighted how Internet growth rates are slowing down in the 48 poorest countries, despite 85% of the population still being offline (Broadband Commission 2016)18. A significant proportion of this population is poor, less educated and located in remote and rural areas, without sufficient purchasing power. Women make up the majority of this population. However, high entry costs and limited rate of return on investment makes it unviable for telecom players to invest in new network infrastructure in these areas, which poses challenges to a market-driven solution to this problem. Consequently, pulling these groups/communities out of the ‘access trap’ they are mired in is an important public policy agenda, as has been recognised in national and international policy discussions (Goldstein 2014)19.

As said earlier, getting the physical infrastructure is only part of the challenge. Policymakers who seek to bridge the gender digital divide should recognise that the task at hand is bigger and is about guaranteeing a quality connectivity experience for women. This is possible only if we tackle the emerging gender divides in ‘use’, following the WSIS plus 10 review document (United Nations 2015)20.

Patterns of use of the Internet vary widely by gender, and quantifiable gaps between men and women increase for more advanced uses (Broadband Commission Working Group on Broadband and Gender 2013)21. Unless women are supported in building their higher-order digital capabilities, they will not be able to unlock the empowering potential of the Internet for strengthening their personal connections, building social networks, getting timely information, gaining access to public services, and/ or leveraging new income-generation opportunities.

To adequately tackle this task at hand, policy measures in this area should use the starting point prescribed by the Broadband Commission Working Group on the Digital Gender Divide (2017)22:

– identifying “the needs, circumstances and (access) preferences of women and girls in different contexts and the factors enabling and limiting women and girls’ access to and use of the Internet (including cultural and social norms).”

This means recognising that ‘women’ are not a homogeneous category who can be targeted through a one-size-fits-all digital inclusion programme. The intersection of caste, class, ethnicity, race, disability, age and other socio-cultural categories with gender identity produces different contexts and circumstances, demanding a socially informed and creative approach to promoting Internet use among women. The Internet access experience should be so designed as to enable women situated across different social contexts to find use for the Internet on their own terms. Such a design will differ vastly between a woman who is visually disadvantaged; a rural, illiterate, woman; or an urban, working class woman. Each of them would have different barriers and challenges to navigate, both in terms of coming online and with respect to full participation in digital spaces, as they engage with technology from their respective positionalities.

The next section will discuss the socio-cultural factors upon which women’s ability to maximise the benefits of connectivity is predicated.

 

4.1.3. Socio-structural factors that contribute to gender digital divides in access and use

The role of “robust, reliable, accurate and timely sex-disaggregated data” on gender divides in access and use in highlighting locally specific social norms on gender cannot be over-emphasised (Broadband Commission Working Group on the Digital Gender Divide 2017)23. Many governments however, still lag behind in this area. While building their statistical systems, policy makers should simultaneously turn to the insights produced by surveys and ethnographic research studies to understand how gender based norms and ideologies shape the digital divide. In-depth inquiry into how socio-cultural factors work in a particular context is integral for an effective e-government strategy that aims at widespread and inclusive participation of women. What the existing evidence tells us about the barriers to women’s effective access to digital technologies and the Internet is discussed below:

1. Differences in educational attainments among women and men

The experience of being connected is mediated largely by textual interfaces. So, functional literacy becomes integral to meaningfully seeking and finding information online. This is an area where women are disproportionately disadvantaged when compared to men, especially in the developing world. Though developing regions have achieved full gender parity in primary education, gender disparity widens in secondary and tertiary levels, which is where sophisticated textual literacy skills are honed. Without these skills, women and girls find themselves ill-equipped to take advantage of the new opportunities that the Internet opens up, for full participation in the knowledge economy and society (Melhem, Morrell and Tandon 2009, cited in Antonio, A. and Tuffley, D 2014; Singh, S. 2017)24.

The Women’s Rights Online network in its 2015 study – which mapped patterns of use of urban-poor women and men in nine countries in the global South – found that women who have some secondary education are six times more likely to access the Internet than women who have primary education or no education. Also, the study found that with a rise in education levels, women’s confidence in their digital capabilities soars and the gender gap in access reduces (WWW Foundation 2015)25. The relationship between education levels and women’s access to the Internet has been borne out by other research. For example, the ITU ICT Facts and Figures 2017 Handbook has highlighted that “ there is a strong link between gender parity in the enrollment ratio in tertiary education and gender parity in Internet use”.

Box 2. Educational attainments, digital capabilities and the gender digital divide : Key findings from the Women’s Rights Online nine-country research study on women's access and use of the Internet (2015)26, covering 7500 women and 2500 men in nine capital cities in the global South

  • There is a strong correlation between women’s educational attainments and their use of the Internet. Among those with tertiary education, only 6% fewer women than men are online. Among those with secondary education, the gender divide in connectivity is 35%, but among those with primary education, it skyrockets to 100%.

  • There is a greater level of self-confidence about Internet use, among individuals with higher educational attainments. The lack of know-how is reported as a key barrier to Internet use by 40% of women and 33% of men, among those with low levels of schooling. In contrast, only 9% of men and 18% of women with secondary education report this as a barrier. Among those with tertiary education, ‘lack of know-how’ is reported by a mere 3% of men and 5% of women. Classroom trainings in digital skills may not give those with higher educational attainments a stronger advantage when it comes to using the Internet. In fact, most participants had not been part of any formal ICT training programme. However, the study found that the enhanced textual literacy, fluency in dominant languages on the Internet, and the overall increase in sense of entitlement that educational attainment brings, makes a difference to women’s negotiation of online spaces.

2. Differences in income levels among women and men

Globally, women earn almost 25% less than men. Because of this underlying income divide between women and men, affordability often becomes a significant determinant of women’s access (Intel Women and the Web Study 2013; GSMA Connected Women 2015)27.

As the Affordability Report 2015-2016 observes, “those countries that have the highest Internet costs (as a proportion of average income) not only have the lowest numbers of women online, but also the largest gender gaps in Internet use”. The high cost of connectivity is a key barrier to women’s access and use of the Internet. At present, except for Europe and North America, no other region in the world has broken the affordability barrier (defined as the availability of an 1 GB data plan for 2% of average monthly income). The Asia-Pacific region has quite some distance to travel in this regard – even though mobile broadband penetration continues to follow an upward trend, supported by market maturity. Currently, the price of a 1 GB data plan is about 4.25% of average monthly income (A4AI 2017)28.

Evidently, the cost of connectivity becomes particularly insurmountable for marginalised women. As the Women’s Rights Online study (2015)29 noted, in the 9 country-contexts it studied, the cost of one GB of data was about 76% of monthly poverty line incomes – which meant that poor women would have to shell out a fortune for even a bare minimum connectivity experience.

3. Age

Across the world, in developed and developing countries alike, younger people tend to have greater levels of access, and are more likely to be engaged in advanced uses, of the Internet (Atlantic 2016; WWW Foundation 2015)30. This trend holds true for both women and men. Older women end up being one of the most disadvantaged segments of the population when it comes to Internet access, even in countries where there is near-universal Internet penetration. For example, in the Republic of Korea, which has almost 100% Internet penetration, the gender gap among users in their 20’s and 30’s has ceased to exist, but it continues to persist among users in their 50’s and 60’s (Kim 2016)31. Similarly, in Australia, where over 83% of citizens aged 15 years and above are Internet users, older women are a demographic segment with limited access to the Internet.

4. Socio cultural norms and gender discourses in online spaces

Women’s online citizen experience is predicated upon the guarantee of unencumbered access, one that presupposes freedom from violence.Though younger women and girls are more likely to access and use the Internet, it would be inaccurate to assume that this experience is meaningful or rewarding. In fact, a 2013 research study by Intel found that family support played a determining role in shaping the connectivity experience of adolescent girls. It also showed that young women and girls are at higher risk of being at the receiving end of cyber-bullying and other forms of online harassment. As the 2015 UN Women Report on Cyberviolence against Women and Girls highlights, women aged 18 to 24 are at a heightened risk of being exposed to every kind of cyber violence. Intimidation and harm associated with participation online prevents many young women and girls from fully realizing the benefits of connectivity. E-government services therefore need to be embedded within clear policy articulations on gender-based online violence.

4.a. Socio-cultural gender norms as barriers to women’s access

Socio-cultural gender norms are context-specific manifestations of patriarchal ideologies. Often, they place huge constraints on women's mobility and agency. Gender stereotypes affect women's access by regulating their choices, as detailed below.

The Internet is a space that threatens the status quo by opening up new possibilities for women to challenge traditional social practices. As a result, there may be a push back from traditionalists and regressive social forces. For example, in parts of India, young women have been prohibited from using mobile phones and the Internet or restraints have been imposed on their use, by the traditional village council comprising caste elders. In some instances, there is a blanket ban; while in others there is a distinction drawn between ‘productive’ uses such as studying and ‘unproductive’ uses such as talking unsupervised to friends, or spending time on Facebook.

Even with the option to access affordable public connectivity, women without household Internet access may not be able to visit local cyber-cafes or other public access points. Lack of 'permission' – especially for adolescent and young women – to visit public spaces may be one barrier; the masculinisation of such spaces as local hang-outs for men and the resulting intimidation, may be another (Intel Women and the Web Study 2013; GSMA Connected Women 2015)32.

4.b. Gender-based discrimination in online spaces

While cultural policing and social norms prevent many women and girls from accessing the personal and social gains of the information society, those who do go online are equally subject to dominant gender ideologies that marginalise or victimise women.

The frontiers of digital space present the same challenges as in non-virtual, real contexts. Digital technologies and the Internet are social artefacts governed by the belief systems and rules underpinning society at large. The cases of trolling, harassment, violence and the surveillance of women online are part of the fabric of patriarchal societies and their webs of control over women's bodies and agency. The United Nations Broadband Commission has estimated that three-quarters of women online have been exposed to some form of technology-mediated violence.

This is not a problem confined to any one part of the world; the nature of technology-mediated violence evolves with the local techno-social context. Mobile-based bullying is widely reported across Africa and Asia. In South Asia, the circulation of rape videos and the non-consensual recording and distribution of private content implicating women and girls have emerged as a sub-culture that makes women acutely vulnerable. The news media report suicides of girls unable to deal with the social consequences of such violations of their privacy. The heckling of women political commentators and the slapping of false defamation charges against women’s rights activists questioning gender injustice has emerged as another major problem. In fact, in March 2017, the International Federation of Journalists and its affiliates in the Asia-Pacific demanded urgent action to prevent the online harassment of women journalists in the region. The chilling effects of intimidation and violence online often translate into self-censorship and thus affect qualitatively the nature of access for women and girls. This impedes women from a free and full exploration of the empowering possibilities of the web, which should be tackled for effective e-government uptake.

The disincentives arising from dominant gender ideologies underlying the connectivity experience also extend to online knowledge ecosystems. Prevailing spaces of collaborative knowledge production in spaces such as Wikipedia tend to exclude women from the South, as they adopt a “white male geek culture” that demands a high degree of self-confidence and tolerance of conflict from contributors (Reagle 2012)33. Only 1 in 10 editors of Wikipedia is a self-identified female. Women Wikipedians, especially those from the global South, have written extensively about the marginalisation they experience and the devaluation of situated knowledges of women from the global South. Such online gender-based discrimination reduces women to the position of passive consumers, preventing them from emerging as active participants, comfortable with, and confident of, using the Internet.

Against this backdrop, it is imperative that policymakers explore effective strategies for catalysing new online information and knowledge cultures that are gender-inclusive and safe.

Unit Summary

  • The global gender digital divide is an undeniable fact. About  55.1% of women globally are excluded from the benefits of connectivity. The proportion of men using the Internet is higher than the proportion of women using the Internet in two-thirds of countries worldwide.
  • The gender digital divide maps on to the unequal geographies of economic development. Women in Least Developed Countries and developing countries are even more disadvantaged than women in the developed world with respect to Internet access. This is because countries with low levels of economic development lack the capacity to invest in Internet infrastructure – essential for driving down connectivity costs and making it affordable for marginalised populations. Even when women in the global South come online, they are unable to enjoy a quality connectivity experience due to limited bandwidth and the absence of relevant content that can make going online a rewarding proposition.
  • Most countries do not generate sex-disaggregated data on patterns of access and use of the Internet, as part of national statistical exercises. For example, in the Asia-Pacific, a mere 10 countries have submitted such data to the ITU. This lack of data is a significant barrier to evolving effective strategies to address the specific challenges that contribute to the gender divide in access and use.
  • Research undertaken in the region and in other countries of the global South reveals that a range of socio-structural factors shape women’s access to and use of the Internet, all of which should be understood and tackled for their local specificities:
    • Educational levels impact women’s self-confidence to navigate the Internet.
    • Employment status determines women’s purchasing power and financial autonomy to invest in connectivity.
    • Age plays a decisive role, with younger women more likely to be online than older women.
    • Prevailing cultural gender norms and controls on mobility and public participation prevent women from accessing the Internet.
    • Sexism and gender based violence makes going online costly for women.

 

 

  1. 1 Valenduc, G. & Vendramin, P. (2016). Work in the digital economy: sorting the old from the new (Working Paper). European Trade Union Institution. Retrieved from http://www.ftu-namur.org/fichiers/Work_in_the_digital_economy-ETUI2016-3-EN.pdf, 21 August 2017
  2. 2 Rue,F.L. (2011). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Retrieved from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf, 21 August 2017
  3. 3 United Nations. (2015). Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/, 5 September 2017
  4. 4 ITU. (2017). ICT Facts and Figures 2017. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2017.pdf, 21 August 2017
  5. 5 Ibid
  6. 6 Ibid
  7. 7 Ibid
  8. 8 ITU. (2016a). Measuring the Information Society Report. Retrieved from https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publications/misr2016/MISR2016-w4.pdf, 21 August 2017
  9. 9 Ibid
  10. 10 Ibid
  11. 11 TRAI. (2016). Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulation 2016, p. 11. Retrieved from http://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf, 21 August 2017
  12. 12 Young, H.,The digital language divide How does the language you speak shape your experience of the internet?. The Guardian, Retrieved from http://labs.theguardian.com/digital-language-divide/, 21 August 2017
  13. 13 ITU, 2016a, op.cit.
  14. 14 ITU. (2017). ICT Facts and Figures 2017. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2017.pdf, 21 August 2017
  15. 15 ITU. (2017). op.cit
  16. 16 Ibid
  17. 17 Ibid
  18. 18 Broadband Commission. (2016). The State of Broadband: Broadband catalyzing sustainable development. Retrieved from http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb-annualreport2016.pdf, 21 August 2017
  19. 19 Goldstein, J. (2014, January 4). The Internet “Access Trap” in Developing Countries. Rerieved from https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2014/01/04/the-internet-access-trap-in-developing-countries/, 21 August 2017
  20. 20 United Nations. (2015). Outcome Document of the High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Overall Review of the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes. Retrieved from http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/Internet/Documents/UNPAN95707.pdf, 21 August 2017
  21. 21 Broadband Commission Working Group on Broadband and Gender. (2013). Doubling Digital Opportunities Enhancing the Inclusion  of Women and Girls in the information Society. Retrieved from http://www.broadbandcommission.org/documents/working-groups/bb-doubling-digital-2013.pdf, 21 August 2017
  22. 22 Broadband Commission Working Group on the Digital Gender Divide.(2017). Recommendations for action: bridging the gender gap in Internet and broadband access and use. Retrieved from http://broadbandcommission.org/Documents/publications/WorkingGroupDigitalGenderDivide-report2017.pdf, 21 August 2017
  23. 23 Ibid
  24. 24 Melhem, S., Morrell, C., & Tandon, N. (2009). Information Communication Technologies for women’s Socioeconomic Empowerment, World Bank Working Paper, cited in Antonio, A. and Tuffley, D. (2014) The Gender Digital Divide in Developing Countries, Future Internet. Retrieved from https://eprints.usq.edu.au/27638/1/The%20Gender%20Digital%20Divide.pdf, 21 August 2017; Singh, S. (2017). Bridging the gender digital divide in developing countries, Journal of Children and Media, 11(2). Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17482798.2017.1305604?journalCode=rchm20, 21 August 2017
  25. 25 WWW Foundation. (2015). Women’s Rights Online: Translating Access into Empowerment. Retrieved from https://webfoundation.org/research/womens-rights-online-2015/, 21 August 2017
  26. 26 Ibid
  27. 27 Intel. (2013). Women and the Web. Retrieved from https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/technology-in-education/women-in-the-web.html, 21 August 2017; GSMA. (2015). Connected Women Bridging the gender gap: Mobile access and usage in lowand middle-income countries. Retrieved from https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Connected-Women-Gender-Gap.pdf, 21 August 2017
  28. 28 A4AI. (2017). The 2017 Affordability Report. Retrieved from http://a4ai.org/affordability-report/report/2017/, 21 August 2017
  29. 29 WWW Foundation, 2015, op.cit.
  30. 30 Lafrance,A.(2016, February 22). Rich, Young, Educated People Spend the Most Time Online. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/internet-planet/470316/ , 21 August 2017; WWW Foundation, 2015, op.cit.
  31. 31 Kim, Jung-soo. (2016). E-government for women’s empowerment: State of the Art Review, Republic of Korea. Retrieved from http://egov4women.unescapsdd.org/country-overviews/korea/a-gender-analysis-of-e-government, 5 September 2017.
  32. 32 Intel, 2013, op.cpt; GSMA, 2015, op.cit
  33. 33 Reagle. (2012). “Free as in sexist?” Free culture and the gender gap, http://firstmonday.org/article/view/4291/3381, 5 September 2017

Glossary Text for Tooltips

Connectivity architectures

This Online Toolkit uses the term to refer to the arrangements for the development and governance of broadband infrastructure backbones and Internet services.

Global Internet user gender gap

 

Access trap

In remote and rural communities, access to the Internet is low, because of the lack of connectivity infrastructure. This ‘low demand’ is in turn cited by network operators as a reason for not investing in infrastructural development in these areas, thereby exacerbating the problem. This negative spiral of low demand and limited supply may be referred to as the Internet access trap. Many of the world’s low-income and rural women, find themselves in such an access trap. See http://a4ai.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Affordability-Report-2013-FINAL.pdf

Higher-order digital capabilities

Basic digital capabilities refer to basic skills of using the computer, the mobile phone and the Internet. Higher-order capabilities refer to sophisticated skills of meaningfully seeking information online, protecting one’s privacy and personal data while surfing; and complex media and data literacy skills.