Advancing gender equality and closing the gender digital gap: Three principles to support behavioural change policy and intervention

Worldwide, interventions and policies to improve gender equality or close gender gaps often struggle to reach their targets. For example, women lag considerably behind in use of even simple digital technologies such as mobile phones or the internet. In 2020, the gap in mobile internet use in low- and middle-income countries was at 15%, while in South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries, it remained as high as 36% and 37% respectively (GSMA, 2021). Use of the internet for more complex activities shows an even wider gap. In Cairo, in 2018, only 21% of female internet users gained economically, and only 7% were able to voice their opinions online (with similar statistics for India, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda and Colombia, Sambuli et al., 2018). This is despite the fact that empowering women through digital technologies is central to global gender equality strategies (e.g. Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, 2015), and is believed to facilitate economic growth and industry-level transformation (International Monetary Fund, 2020). Progress is slow because behaviours are gendered: there are stark dissociations between what women and men do – or are expected to do. These dissociations are deeply entrenched by social norms, to the extent that interventions to change them face resistance or can even backfire. Increasingly, governments are using behavioural change interventions in a bid to improve public policy outcomes, while development or gender organisations are using behavioural change programmes to shift gender norms. However, very little is known about how gendered social norms impact the digital divide, or how to use behavioural interventions to shift these norms. Drawing on several research papers that look at the gender digital gap, this brief examines why behavioural change is difficult, and how it could be implemented more effectively. This brief is addressed to policymakers, programme co-ordinators in development organisations, and strategy planners in gender equality interventions who are interested in ways to accelerate progress on gender equality, and close the gender digital gap. The brief offers a set of principles on which to base interventions, programmes and strategies to change gendered behaviours. The principles in this brief were developed as part of a programme of research into ways to close the gender digital gap.