The Gender Gap -- why does it matter for digital health?

Improvements in phone access, particularly among women, is increasingly being highlighted for its transformative potential to accelerate social and economic development and potentially improve health outcomes. Yet a dearth of evidence exists linking technology directly to improvements in careseeking or practices for reproductive maternal newborn and child health, and increasing concerns are emerging about the potential for inequities in the implementation, use, and funding of digital interventions. While women’s mobile phone access has increased significantly over time, mobile gender gaps persist not only in women’s ownership of phones but in their digital literacy and usage. For digital health interventions to attain high population coverage, particularly amongst the poorest and most vulnerable, efforts are needed to address these gaps and ensure that existing inequalities are not compounded. In this pre-formed panel, we draw from secondary analyses of data in India and across 17 countries globally to explore the gender gap between household and women’s access to phones and its implications for health practices and careseeking. We next consider how women’s access is measured, and what factors underpin mobile phone use. As part of the latter, we draw from household survey findings in India to present data on women and health care providers’ digital literacy-- demonstrating their observed ability to perform a series of basic tasks ranging from navigating IVR prompts, opening and reading SMS messages, storing contacts on a phone, to giving a missed call. With less than half of respondents in India able to perform these basic tasks, findings will show that the provision of a device in and of itself is grossly insufficient for yielding change. Rather to optimize the use of technology in the health sector, not only are efforts needed to bridge gaps in technology access, particularly among women, but as well to facilitate device use by enhancing digital literacy and addressing underlying barriers to use.