PTA Drafts ‘Digital Gender Inclusion Strategy’

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to address the challenges women face in accessing digital technology. This approach includes enhancing digital literacy, improving affordability, investing in relevant content and services, ensuring online safety, and challenging prevailing social norms. PTA has drafted a “Digital Gender Inclusion Strategy” to tackle the digital gender divide, which refers to the gap between men and women in access to digital technologies. This divide is exacerbated by structural inequalities and social norms that affect education and income disparities between genders.

PTA Drafts ‘Digital Gender Inclusion Strategy’

Despite mobile technology being the primary means of accessing the internet for both men and women in Pakistan, women lag behind in mobile phone ownership and usage. The GSMA’s Mobile Gender Gap Report 2022 highlights that women in Pakistan are 33 per cent less likely than men to own a mobile phone and 38 per cent less likely to use mobile internet.

The barriers preventing women from accessing and utilizing mobile phones and the internet are multifaceted and interconnected. Surveys, interviews, and consultations conducted as part of the strategy development process noted concerns regarding the affordability of digital technologies. Over half of the respondents perceived handsets, mobile services, and the Internet as somewhat affordable. However, 36 per cent found mobile handsets unaffordable, indicating the need for more affordable options, especially for those with lower incomes.

Women were more likely to perceive mobile handsets, mobile packages, and the internet as unaffordable, indicating greater financial constraints in accessing these technologies. Women primarily use the internet to connect with family and friends, revealing a significant gender difference in the primary reasons for internet use.

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Attitudes toward women’s internet use also pose challenges, with a significant proportion of respondents believing that women should only “sometimes” be allowed to use mobile phones and the internet, or not at all. Access to networks, handsets, formal identification documents (IDs), sales agents, training, and electricity emerged as significant challenges.

Affordability, especially of handsets, is a primary obstacle to mobile ownership, impacting both men and women in Pakistan. Women, due to lower incomes, reduced access to external financial resources, and financial dependence on men, experience affordability challenges more acutely.

Taxation on telecommunication services, which increases costs for companies and consumers, particularly affects women due to their lower incomes and financial independence. This taxation, coupled with the lack of recognition and support for the telecommunications sector, raises prices for telecommunications services.