The world in your hands

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Conversations about our increasingly digital world tend to assume mobile phones are universal. For many young people around the globe, however, owning – or even having access to – a phone is a distant prospect, and little is known about the barriers to mobile technology.
Non-profit organisation Girl Effect wanted to address this by studying how girls use mobiles and their barriers to access. Using a mixed-methods approach – which included interviews by technology-enabled girl ambassadors (TEGA) and online surveys – the research explored the issues that girls aged 13-19, in 21 countries, face when it comes to mobile ownership, use and behaviours.

More than half ( 56%) of girls surveyed in the TEGA interviews – in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, India and Bangladesh – do not own a phone, compared with 33% of boys. However, 52% of girls (compared with 28% of boys) say they access a phone by borrowing one.
The findings reveal that mobile access for girls is more complex than ...