Who Got Phone

Report

A LIRNEasia research article, ‘Who’s Got the Phone? The Gendered Use of Telephones at the Bottom of the Pyramid’, by Ayesha Zainudeen, Tahani Iqbal, Rohan Samarajiva and Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara, based on an 8,600-plus sample survey of telephone users across Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand. The article finds a significant gender divide in phone access in Pakistan and India, a smaller one in Sri Lanka, and none in the Philippines or Thailand, and challenges prior assumptions from small-sample studies in wealthy countries that women’s and men’s phone use patterns are fundamentally different.