The Gendered Architecture of Digital Access: Geography, Social Stratification, and Women’s Mobile Phone Access in India: Evidence from NFHS-5
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63539/isrn.2026028Keywords:
Gender Digital Divide, Rural Women, Mobile-Phone Access, NFHS-5, Intersectionality, Digital Citizenship, India.Abstract
As India continues its rapid digital transformation, the mobile phone is no longer simply a device for calls and SMS but a key technology of everyday citizenship that increasingly enables access to welfare entitlements, financial services, health, education, employment and public institutions. However, connectivity has not created an equitable capability to engage in digital life. Technologies are nei-ther socially neutral nor always emancipatory but are shaped by gender and power relations, as Wajcman (2004) states. Likewise, the re-sources-and-appropriation approach of van Dijk (2020) shows that digital ine-quality is not only about material access but also about skills, autonomy, usage and gains from technology. This paper uses descriptive NFHS-5 (2019–21) cross-tabulations to analyse women’s access to personal mobile phones by age, place of residence, education, religion, caste/social group, internet use and state. Overall access is 54.0%, but it is socially unequal: it ranges from 46.6% among rural women to 69.4% among urban women, and from 34.4% among women with no schooling to 85.4% among women with higher education. Drawing on feminist technology studies, digital-divide theory, the capability approach (Sen, 1999) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), the paper argues that access is shaped by material resources, household authority, social permission and insti-tutional opportunity. The gender digital divide is therefore not just a temporary technological gap that could be filled by the market but a structurally produced divide. Mobile access is only a starting point for digital citizenship; meaningful inclusion needs to be continuous, affordable, autonomous, safe and beneficial. The paper thus calls for an intersectional policy approach that focuses on wom-en’s autonomy, safety and substantive digital freedom.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Mahera Imam, Prof. N. Manimekalai, Prof. S. Suba (Author)
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