One of the big challenges of the Information Age is that of exclusion: Significant parts of the world have no access to information technology and are unable to participate in the modern economy. Governments and companies have been working together to narrow the gap between the technology haves and have-nots, with varying degrees of success.

It’s a problem that’s economic: Jon Fredrik Baksaas, CEO of Norwegian telecom giant Telenor, says, “The key is to bring down entry costs.” But it is also social: Saloni Malhotra, a rural BPO pioneer and founder of DesiCrew, a business support services company, says, “cultural barriers” are responsible. But both schools of argument agree on the gender divide: Most women do not control finances, and so are unable to afford the means of accessing technology. At the same time, community elders, mainly in underserved rural areas, blame technology for women “going astray”.

“[The] gender divide needs to be understood in the context of bringing women online and keeping them there as users and builders of a free, open, and universal Internet, which augments human rights,” says Subi Chaturvedi, an Indian member of the United Nations (UN) Internet Governance Forum.

India is among the world’s least-connected countries, according to the 2013 ‘Measuring the Information Society’ report from the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency for information and communication technologies. The government’s Digital India campaign aims to remedy this, and narrowing the gender digital divide has priority here. In sync, this year’s ‘Digital Technologies and Gender Justice in India’ report, by technology-aided development NGO IT for Change, talks of the need to train teachers to be equitable when teaching how to use technology.

The private sector is helping. For instance, Uninor, Telenor’s India arm, has announced a $113,000 (Rs 69 lakh) pilot project to push low-cost mobile services to women in 87 villages in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Last year, Google, with Intel, Hindustan Unilever, and Axis Bank, began the Helping Women Get Online campaign. “In the last 12 months, the number of women using the Internet has grown 35% as against 31% [for] men,” Rajan Anandan, Google India’s vice president and managing director, recently told the media. “This is the first time women have surpassed men.” Google also runs a female Internet literacy campaign in association with Bollywood actor-director Farhan Akhtar’s social organisation MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination).

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has also joined in. At a recently held internet.org summit in New Delhi, Zuckerberg said: “We’ve a fund of $1 million to help developers build and scale apps [for] farmers and migrant workers and students and women. We’re going to fund top apps in each of these categories.”

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