The digital gender gap has moved from the margins of policy debate to its core. In June 2020, the UN Secretary-General described it as “a matter of life and death.” That warning has aged well. The pandemic hard-wired digital access into education, work, welfare delivery, and basic services. Internet use surged by 40–100% globally. Exclusion did not shrink. It hardened into a new layer of inequality, reinforcing older divides of gender, income, and education.
India illustrates this contradiction sharply. The State of India’s Digital Economy 2024 places India as the world’s third most digitalised economy after the United States and China. Yet when user-level digital adoption is measured, India ranks 12th among G20 countries. Scale has raced ahead. Access has not kept pace.
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The gender divide exceeds global averages
India’s digital access gaps are wider than global benchmarks. The gender gap in internet connectivity stands at 10%, above the global average of 9%. The rural–urban divide is starker at 58%, compared to a global average of 49%. These are not marginal differences. They shape who studies, who works, and who benefits from public systems increasingly routed through digital platforms.
Globally, 70% of men use the internet compared to 65% of women. The economic cost is measurable. The Alliance for Affordable Internet estimated in 2021 that low- and lower-middle-income countries have lost over $1 trillion in GDP due to women’s exclusion from the digital economy.
India’s numbers are worse. GSMA’s 2024 report shows that while the average gender gap in mobile ownership across LMICs was 8% in 2023, India’s stood at 12%. The gender gap in mobile internet access averaged 15% across LMICs but reached 30% in India. Earlier data from the Internet and Mobile Association of India showed that 67% of men had internet access compared to 33% of women, with rural usage at 72% for men and 28% for women. Mobile phone ownership is higher, but the quality gap remains. Seventy-five percent of women own a phone versus 85% of men, yet only 35% of women own smartphones.
Access does not translate into use
Education exposes the limits of headline access figures. India has over 250 million school students across 1.5 million schools and another 37.4 million students in higher education institutions. ASER 2022 shows that nearly 90% of households report a smartphone at home. That statistic obscures ownership and control. Only 19.8% of girls reported owning their own smartphone, compared to 43.7% of boys.
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The National Family Health Survey (2019–21) found that just 33% of women had ever used the internet, against 57% of men. ASER’s 2024 survey on device availability versus use showed that in rural India, household smartphone access is nearly equal for boys and girls. Actual usage is not. The gap widens once agency, time, and permission are factored in.
This distinction matters. Digital systems assume individual access. In many households, access is shared, supervised, or conditional. Education platforms, online assessments, skilling modules, and job portals do not adapt to these constraints.
Safety, surveillance, and self-restriction
What the numbers often miss is the role of safety and control. Studies repeatedly show that women who technically have access choose not to use digital tools fully. Online harassment, fear of reputational damage, and monitoring by family members reduce effective usage. Phones are shared. Browsing histories are checked. Social media accounts are discouraged or banned. These are not edge cases. They are routine.
This has direct consequences. Women avoid public-facing platforms, online job searches, or gig work that requires visibility. Digital literacy programmes that ignore safety concerns see low retention. Access without autonomy does not translate into participation. Policy discussions that focus on devices and data plans underestimate this barrier.
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The issue is not simply cybercrime. It is social control mediated through technology. In such settings, digital inclusion becomes fragile. A smartphone may exist in the household, but the cost of using it can be social sanction rather than money.
Labour participation and the digital constraint
India’s female labour force participation rate remains low at around 25%. Women constitute less than 2% of the digital platform workforce. The standard explanation points to unpaid care and mobility constraints. Digital work should have softened both. It has not, because access, safety, and skills remain binding constraints.
Evidence from the NSSO’s 2020–21 survey is consistent. Increased mobile phone access raises women’s labour force participation in rural India. Home internet availability amplifies this effect in urban areas. Digital literacy strengthens the impact further, but primarily in cities. The pattern is clear. Connectivity alone is insufficient. Skills and autonomy determine outcomes.
Digital infrastructure lowers entry barriers. It reduces dependence on physical mobility, expands access to information, and opens remote and platform-based work. When women lack smartphones, data access, privacy, or confidence in digital use, these gains remain theoretical.
Policy needs to move beyond devices
Closing the gap requires more than distributing devices or subsidising data. It requires gender-specific design and delivery. Urban and rural strategies cannot be identical. Digital outreach through SMS and messaging platforms can disseminate information on education, healthcare, skilling, and employment. But messaging alone does not resolve control and safety concerns.
Programmes need to integrate digital safety, privacy, and grievance redressal. Platforms that enable anonymous applications, verified employers, and secure communication matter. So do community-level interventions that legitimise women’s digital use. Without this, awareness campaigns will raise expectations without changing outcomes.
The state has created schemes. Access and uptake remain uneven. Without assured individual access to internet-enabled devices, digital literacy, and a safer online environment, the promise of digital inclusion will remain aspirational. Raising female labour participation is not only a social objective. It is an economic necessity tied directly to India’s growth ambitions towards 2047.
The digital gender gap is no longer about connectivity. It is about control. Until policy recognises that distinction, progress will remain partial.
Dr Reeta Tomar is Assistant Professor of Economics at Christ University, Delhi NCR Campus.