Digital Age did not end women’s exclusion: 1.7 billion women have no access to cell phones

Al Hayat carried a special article on the occasion of the 20th anniversary this September of the United Nations Basic Program for Advancing Women’s Rights, the ‘Beijing Declaration’ which was endorsed by 189 states. The article noted that attending countries in 1995 could not anticipate the impact of the information technology and communications revolution that opened the doors for unprecedented opportunities. All this said, the newspaper noted that some 60% of world population (i.e. 4.4 billion people) remains not ‘connected’, with women making the largest disadvantaged proportion. The GSM (Group Special Mobile Association) recently published a report entitled ‘bridging the gender gap: mobile ownership and uses in low and middle income countries’ in which it tackled the issue of women’s ownership and uses of mobiles. The report indicated that over 1.7 billion women in countries of the above category do not have a cell phone, i.e. 14% less than men in this regard. Subsequently, the total number of women owning a mobile phone is less by 200 million than men. This gender gap is even wider in some regions, like for example in South Asia, where it is estimated at 38%. The survey also predicted that realizing gender equality in mobile ownership and usage among low and middle income communities could have several economic and social advantages, namely: the creation of jobs and education for some 200 million women, an addition of USD 170 billion in new job prospects in the field of telecommunications per year by 2020. Globally, the report noted some key hindering factors that prevent women from possessing cell phones, mainly, the high charge or cost of phones, lack of proper mobile networks or poor coverage, harassment calls, personal insecurity, lack of confidence in mobile sales persons and inadequate technical skills to use them. (Al Hayat, 14 July 2015)