India largely drives gender gap in mobile internet use across South Asia, LMICs: GSMA

NEW DELHI: Over 800 million women will need to adopt mobile internet in order to close the digital gender gap by 2030 across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the GSM Association (GSMA) said Wednesday.

The London-based telco body said that the gender gap in mobile internet in South Asia, and across LMICs overall, is driven by India – which has a population of 1.4 billion people.

It said that between 2018 to 2020, the gender gap in India had been narrowing due to changing market dynamics, the availability of affordable handsets, and a notable increase in the adoption of mobile internet by women during the Covid pandemic. But the trend reversed in 2021 owing to an increase in the adoption of mobile internet by men.