We first present overarching findings on how the women in our sample used phones and how this related to phone use among husbands. We then present the five proximal determinants of women’s unequal phone access and use from our framework. In the discussion we link these determinants to underlying patriarchal social norms.
Wide range in women and men’s mobile phone usage profiles but enduring gender gap
There was wide variation among respondents in terms of their self-reported engagement with mobile phones. Respondent phone access and use emerged through discussion as a complex phenomenon across multiple facets: what the respondent’s phone could do, what the respondent knew how to do, and what the respondent actually did on a regular basis. When examined in wife–husband pairs, the expected gender gap in phone emerged clearly (box 1).
Box 1. Example of wife–husband phone usage profiles: complete reliance on husband
WOM_26 and HUS_26 live in a nuclear family with their two young children. They are very poor (wealth quintile 1) and members of a marginalised scheduled caste group. HUS_26 owns a feature phone (button-type phone with a camera); WOM_26 does not have a phone (figure 2).
HUS_26’s phone is not internet enabled but he loads the memory card with music, images and videos and uses Bluetooth to share content with friends. He keeps it with him throughout the day when he leaves the house. WOM_26 has access to her husband’s phone only in the mornings and evenings when HUS_26 is home from work. She reports that she can answer incoming calls and make outgoing calls. However, since the phone is carried by her husband, he answers all incoming calls. If an incoming call is for WOM_26 and HUS_26 answers the call while home with her, he passes the phone to her. He also dials for her when she wants to make a call. She is not literate and is not able to store contacts or use SMS. She does not take photos or view any media on her husband’s phone.
Dyadic comparison of phone use for WOM_26 and HUS_26.
Box 2. Example of wife-husband phone usage profile: wife a basic user, husband super savvy
WOM_12 and HUS_12 live with HUS_12’s parents and siblings and have one young child. They are wealthier (wealth quintile 4). HUS_12 owns a smartphone; WOM_12 owns a basic phone, which was given to her 4 years ago by her husband when he bought a new button phone with a camera for himself (figure 3).
HUS_12 recently bought himself a smartphone and uses many applications including Facebook and YouTube. WOM_12 is semiliterate and only uses the phone to pick up and dial calls, which she does regularly on her own.
Dyadic comparison of phone use for WOM_12 and HUS_12.
Box 3. Example of wife-husband phone usage profile: wife has high capability despite low literacy
WOM_09 and HUS_09 live with HUS_09’s parents and siblings and have one young child. They are wealthier (wealth quintile 4) and members of a scheduled caste group. HUS_09 owns a smartphone; WOM_09 does not have a phone (figure 4).
HUS_09 is a very savvy user, who has Facebook, Youtube, TrueCaller and other apps. WOM_09 knows how to use several features on her husband’s smartphone, although she only has access to his phone when HUS_09 is home from work and she only makes and receives calls when she accesses HUS_09’s phone. She is able to navigate the phone interface in many ways using visual clues (eg, to look at photos sent on WhatsApp) but she is not literate, which hinders her use of other features.
Dyadic comparison of phone use for WOM_09 and HUS_09.
Women in our sample were ‘free’ to use phones
Respondents (both the women themselves and their family members) in our sample of moderate to high Kilkari listeners widely reported that married women’s use of mobile phones was not constrained by direct family control. Almost all our respondent families reported no overt monitoring or restriction on married women’s use of phones.
I: Do you need to take any permission for using the phone?
R: No, never.
I: How much freedom do you get for using the phone?
R: I have got full freedom. (WOM_03, technically owns the family’s brick phone but her husband keeps it with him throughout the day)
She doesn’t take any permission. She uses it according to herself. She sees things or listens to things. That’s it! (HUS_22, owns a feature phone that his wife borrows)
No one has any restriction like they cannot talk or anything like that. (HUS_28, owns a brick phone that his wife borrows)
Husbands also presented themselves as broadly supportive seeing their wives gain digital literacy. When asked by our researchers about whether their wives should receive mobile use training, including on e-commerce, husbands said they would support this training. There were two exceptions, wherein respondents explicitly stated that women were barred from handling the husband’s phone: in both cases (FAM_14 and FAM_17) the woman was not allowed to use her husband’s new smartphone beyond speaking on it after her husband dialled or picked up a call for her, although she had been allowed to handle the older phone. In HUS_17’s case, even after reporting that he did not allow his wife to handle his smartphone, he persisted in endorsing a liberal attitude towards women’s phone use by saying that his wife should use phone and that women should know how to use smartphone features.
Phone use limited by the ‘cage’ of proximal barriers
Despite most respondents reporting that women had no overt limitations on their phone use, they were nonetheless constrained by gender inequity across five areas, discussed in turn below: (1) permitted and desired use, (2) access to the handset, (3) phone characteristics and functionality, (4) digital skills and (5) time allocation.
Proximal barrier 1: permitted and desired phone use
Women’s use of phones was limited by narrow family expectations and limited personal desire in terms of what the phone could be used for. Phones were readily provided to women, and family members did not monitor who women were speaking to, because it was well accepted that women only use them to call their husbands and natal family members (parents and siblings).
Who else would I talk to? [Just] Ma and Papa. (WOM_05, owns a brick phone)
R : Yes, we have to ask for his [father-in-law’s] phone. He gives it then. He doesn’t ask that where we want to speak.
I : He doesn’t ask you?
R : He knows that I will speak to his son. (WOM_27, borrows her husband’s smartphone when he is home; uses her father-in-law’s brick phone when her husband is not home)
With a few exceptions, women were not expected to and did not express any desire to use the phone for communication with friends or for employment, two common phone uses reported by men. Most women reported never using the phone to speak to anyone beyond family, explaining that they did not have friends and were not employed outside the home.
I: Similarly, do you have any friends from school you speak to sometimes?
R: No, I don’t even know what a friend is like. (WOM_18, owns her own brick phone)
I: Is it that you don’t have a friend or you don’t call them?
R: I don’t have a friend. Also I do not talk to anyone. (WOM_28, borrows her husband’s brick phone)
There were exceptions: WOM_10 (borrows her husband’s feature phone) reported sometimes communicating with friends by phone and WOM_03 (technically owns her own phone but her husband keeps it with him) reported using the phone to coordinate her work as a cook in a school. WOM_10’s engagement with friends may have been driven by the fact that she was pursuing a bachelor’s degree, and was one of only two women in our sample who had more than 12 years of schooling. WOM_03 was our only female respondent with salaried work outside the home. While most female respondents said that they did not speak to health workers by phone, two women (WOM_05, WOM_18, both own their own brick phones) said that they did.
In terms of entertainment, about half the women reported not consuming any music, videos, photos or social media on the phone. Among those who did access entertainment on the phone, many framed this use as low importance, infrequent and often for the benefit of their children. Men on the other hand, spoke of entertainment on the phone as a central reason for phone use.
R: He [HUS_14] listens to music. He watches movies as well if there is time. And if not, he goes to work, he is at work the whole day.
I: And what about WhatsApp, Facebook, and Tik Tok?
R: Yes, he uses them.
I: He uses them?
R: Yes.
I: And what about you? Do you listen to music or watch videos?
R: No.
I: You do not watch movies? He watches them alone?
R: No. [Laughs] I am busy with my son. I only care for him. (WOM_14, borrows her husband’s smartphone)
I: What kind of movies do you like?
R: Just like that I get them in my phone.
I: Hindi movies, Bhojpuri movies. What kind of movies you like?
R: I like all them. I watch bits of all movies.
I: Anyone else also watches?
R: No.
I: Like there are three people in your family. Like your wife?
R: There is television at home. So she watches that. (HUS_15, owns a feature phone that his wife borrows)
Proximal barrier 2: access to the handset
Women’s use of phones was limited by their dependence on men to buy or lend them phones and by their frequent physical distance from phones. While women who owned their own phones had much greater access to them than women who borrowed their husband’s, women lacked the financial autonomy to buy themselves phones. They received phones as hand-me-downs or gifts from male family members (usually their husbands).
I : Who bought this phone?
R : My husband.
I : You husband.
R : Who else will buy the phone? [laughs] (WOM_05, owns her own brick phone)
Women were not seen to need phones as much as men because women did not use phones to access employment (with the exception of WOM_03, the school cook). Thus women’s phone ownership was seen as a luxury, and if her husband’s phone broke he would take over her phone.
Women also spent more time physically away from phones, which limited their capacity to answer incoming calls. While men kept their phones in their pockets, particularly when outside the home, women who owned their own phones tended to keep their phones on surfaces and left them in one place when moving around the home and compound. When women shared phones with their husbands, the phone was generally kept by the husband throughout the day and she had to ask him to access it. Respondents emphasised that she was not asking permission but simply asking for the phone to be handed to her—but this was nonetheless a barrier.
I: Ok. And who has the mobile for the maximum time?
R: My husband has it.
I: Your husband, ok. The mobile which your husband has, when can you use it?
R: I use it only if I get time. I use it to call my mother, otherwise I don't use it. (WOM_09, borrows her husband’s smartphone)
No, I don’t keep it [the mobile] with me all the time. I leave it anywhere in the house. (WOM_07, owns her own brick phone)
Proximal barrier 3: phone characteristics and functionality
Among couples where both spouses had phones, women’s use of digital technology was limited by the fact that their personal phones could perform fewer features than their husbands’. Some women reported knowing how to use advanced features, such as how to navigate WhatsApp or view movies, but rarely or never executing these skills because they were constrained by the absence of these features on their phones. For example, WOM_13 knew how to play songs and take pictures when she had access to her husband’s phone but could not execute these functions on her phone, since it did not have a memory card. None of the women in our sample who owned their own phones had a better phone than her husband and very few had phones with equal features. For example, WOM_06, WOM_07, WOM_12, WOM_19, and WOM_23 all had simple brick phones while their husbands had internet enabled smart or feature phones. Even among our respondents where both the husband and wife had simple button phones (FAM_05, FAM_11, FAM_13, FAM_18, and FAM_25), several husbands (HUS_05, HUS_11, HUS_13) had memory cards added to their phones while their wives did not.
Women who owned their own phones had frequent connectivity gaps due to ‘zero balance’ (no money loaded on the phone) on their phones and almost all respondents reported that less financial credit was loaded onto women’s phones. Women did not ‘top up’ the financial credit on their own phones because they had low financial autonomy and were encouraged to stay in the home.
I: So, do you recharge her phone, or does she do it on her own?
R: No, I do it. I am the earner, she is a lady, a housewife. [Laughs] (HUS_24, owns his own smartphone that his wife borrows)
Since men were responsible for topping up credit women could only ask and remind men to add credit to their phones. They reported that men often did not top up their phones in a timely manner, leaving them without functioning phones for periods of time ranging from a few days to weeks.
Proximal barrier 4: digital skill
Women’s phone use was constrained by more limited digital skill, for example, lower ability to navigate and use the full range of available features on the mobile phone. Both male and female respondents presented digital capacities across the spectrum from highly savvy (able to use social media and information platforms, as well as saving contacts, texting, taking photos and using the calculator, BlueTooth and hotspots) to basic (just making and receiving calls). However, women more often spoke of not knowing how to access features on the phone and female respondents often said that they relied on their spouses to perform some functions for them. This lower digital literacy was closely tied to women’s lower rates of literacy.
However, lower digital literacy was driven not only by lower literacy but also by lower confidence, discouragement from family, and fewer opportunities to gain digital skills. For example, WOM_14 knew how to dial and receive calls on the brick phone she used to borrow from her husband. However, he recently upgraded to a smartphone and she reported that she is unable to perform any tasks on this new phone. Her husband dials for her now and has not given her any opportunities to learn how to navigate the new phone. Moreover, she reported that she does not want to learn to use the new phone, because if she learns to use it she will become interested in it, and this would be a problem because she does not have access to it.
R: He does not give it.
I: Okay, do you wish to learn?
R: No. [Smiles]
I: No?
R: No, he does not give it to me and I do not even feel like learning to use it.
I: Okay.
R: If I do, I will get interested in it. Now, since I do not have it so I do not learn to use it.
I: Okay, that is the reason? That you do not have it?
R: Yes. And we do not have much money that we buy it. (WOM_14, borrows her husband’s smartphone)
WOM_26 explained that her lack of education prevented her from using the phone, despite the fact that she was able to read and that some features, like the camera or watching a video, are somewhat accessible even without literacy and were used by her husband, who was himself only semiliterate.
I: Ok. What all do you know in the phone? Can you use it?
R: I haven’t studied sister so how can I.
I: Ok. So, if you have to dial on the phone then your husband does it?
R: Yes.
I: […] Do you listen to songs?
R: I never listen to songs.
I: Have you ever seen a video or clicked a picture?
R: Nothing. (WOM_26, borrows her husband’s feature phone)
Proximal barrier 5: time allocation
Women’s use of phones was limited by scarcity of leisure time as well as norms that hindered the use of phones for leisure. It was widely accepted that men used the phones for ‘time pass’ (entertainment).
I : Do you use WhatsApp?
R : Yes.
I : Facebook?
R : I do.
I : Ok, you use Facebook. That means you use all these?
R : Yes.
I : Do you ever watch videos on YouTube?
R : Yes, I watch on YouTube. Like, if I want to watch any movie. I want to pass time. And songs. All these things. (HUS_19, owns his own smartphone and his wife has her own brick phone)
Respondents emphasised how busy women were, and explained that they have limited time available to use phones.
R: [I use the phone when] he returns in the evening.
I: You do not get time in the morning?
R: In the morning, I make breakfast, there is work. (WOM_14, borrows her husband’s smartphone)
I use it only if I get time. I use it to call my mother, otherwise I don't use it. (WOM_09, borrows her husband’s smartphone)
Women’s domestic work in rural Madhya Pradesh was labour intensive. However, gender inequity on time allocation extended beyond a lack of leisure time: even when women had time to rest, they could not be seen to be spending this time on the phone, unless they were speaking to their family members. Respondents explained that women could be negatively judged for spending ‘too much’ time on the phone because they may be seen to be shirking domestic responsibilities or accused of inappropriate behaviour, including gossip and infidelity.
There is my Jeth’s [husband’s elder brother’s] daughter-in-law. I don’t know much about her. […] I have mostly heard that she keeps sitting with the phone throughout the day and doesn’t do household chores. […] They say that bahu [daughter-in-law] keeps using the phone and I have to do all the work. [laughs] (WOM_03, technically owns the family’s brick phone but her husband keeps it with him throughout the day)
R: She doesn’t talk [to friends or health workers].
I: Ok. Why doesn’t she talk to anyone? What is the reason for not talking?
R : I don’t know. She doesn’t talk too much. Zada faltu kisi se baat nahi karti. [She doesn’t talk useless things much to anybody]. She is busy with her work like taking care of the children, cleaning the house. She does all this. (HUS_16, owns his own brick phone)
I: Ok. What if a woman has her own phone? What do people think of her in the neighbourhood?
R: They think that she uses it for spurious purposes […] [That]
she engages with bad persons. She indulges in obscene talks and some people take advantage of that. (HUS_29, owns his own smartphone but it is currently broken and he is using a brick phone; his wife currently has no phone because her smartphone broke)
