Measuring and Understanding Gender Inequalities in Digital Access

The tremendous expansion of the internet and mobile technologies has transformed the ways in which individuals seek information, communicate and participate in their communities. Despite the rapid expansion of digital technologies worldwide, women lag behind men in access and use of the internet and mobile phones in many parts of the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (ITU 2017). Gender equality in internet and mobile phone access, and improving digital literacy are important targets (UN 2016) within the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But population-level data on digital access by gender are often lacking in geographical coverage and timeliness.

How can we better measure digital gender gaps in real-time? How are digital technologies shaping social outcomes linked to gender inequalities in social, economic and health domains? How can we leverage new types of data sources from the web and social media to measure and understand global digital gender inequalities?

The Digital Gender Gaps team led by the Department of Sociology and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, together with collaborators at the Societal Computing Group at Saarland University and the Department of Business Economics, Health, and Social Care (DEASS) of University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), is exploring these questions.