A Tough Call: Understanding the Gendered Impact of Mobile Technology in Low Income Communities

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The increasingly powerful and decreasing cost of smartphones throughout the world is making it possible for low income communities to access the internet and social other media. How does this increased access to the internet and other forms of social media affect women’s participation in business and politics in these communities? This research will use experimental methods and modern economic theory to investigate the effects of internet access through smartphones on women’s business success and political participation in low income communities. In addition, the research will investigate whether there are gender differences in adoption of this mobile technology, whether there are gender gaps in the effects of mobile technology on business development and political participation, especially whether access to the internet encourages women to run for political office. Finally, the research will also study whether access to the internet changes gender norms in low income communities. The results of this research will provide a better understanding of how technical innovation affect low income communities and whether these effects differ by gender. It also provides inputs into designing policies to reduce poverty in low income communities. This research establishes the US as the global leader in the study of the effects digital technological innovation on low income communities.This project encompasses two separate studies focusing on the effects of internet access through mobile phones on low income communities and their distributional consequences. Both parts leverage a sudden and large-scale availability of low cost smartphones to low income rural households. The PIs will use a regression discontinuity design to study how smart phone access impact electoral outcomes, political conflict, and women’s political engagement. The PIs will construct outcome variables from community-level data on electoral outcomes, including voter turnout by gender, performance of female candidates, and performance of candidates with criminal records. The project will also use newspaper reports to construct a geographically-explicit database of women’s political mobilization. In the second study, the project will employ a randomized controlled trial strategy that introduces a new value-added service for recently acquired mobile phones by women: the service delivers weekly information on health and government services, while contacting women on a monthly basis to solicit their feedback on service provision. The study will vary financial incentives to use the service as well as the share of women in the community invited to participate in the service. This design will allow the PIs to assess whether providing women with a norms-compatible “use case” for phones can spur deeper adoption, while quantifying how peer effects inform the adoption decision, and how adoption impacts social norms and women’s networks. The results of this research will provide a better understanding of how technical innovation affect low income communities and whether these effects differ by gender. This research establishes the US as the global leader in the study of the effects digital technological innovation on low income communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.