Gender of household head and the digital divide in South Africa’s settlements

Abstract

In South Africa, female household headship is sometimes shown as an indicator of economic disadvantage. As a result, female-headed households (FHHs) are expected to have limited access to information communication technologies (ICTs). This study analyzed the concept of the digital divide by the gender of the household head in South African settlements based on South Africa’s annual General Household Survey data sets from 2011 to 2014, and the 2011 South African Census data. Tetrachoric correlation coefficients were used to examine the relationship between the gender of household head and access to various forms of ICTs in South African settlements. The results of the study show that for some technologies, female household headship is more closely correlated to access to ICTs for FHHs in remote tribal rural areas compared to FHHs in the more developed or more accessible informal urban areas and formal rural areas. The study shows the confounding effect of the household’s location of residence on the relationship between the gender of the household head and household access to ICTs in South Africa. The income of the household head rather than their gender is revealed as a major determinant of household access to ICTs.

Keywords:

• ICTs
• digital divide
• gender
• female headed households
• settlements

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Statistics South Africa and Data First: University of Cape Town as the owners and providers of the data sets used in the study, namely, the South African General Household Survey data sets for the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014; and the 2011 South African Census data.

Disclosure statement

The authors confirm that there is no conflict of interest with any individual, organisation, or funders regarding the publication of the paper in the Gender, Technology, and Development Journal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tapfuma Pashapa

Tapfuma Pashapa holds a MPhil. degree in Demography from University of Cape Town (UCT) and a degree in Mathematics from Midlands State University. His research interests are in Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) and the demography of developing countries. He is a member of the iCOMMS research group at UCT.

Ulrike Rivett

Ulrike Rivett holds a PhD in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town and an Engineering Degree from the Technische Universitaet Munchen. She is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Cape Town and has published extensively in the field of Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). She leads the iCOMMS research team, which focuses on understanding the use of Information Communication Technologies for the benefit of society by engaging proactively with government, municipalities and rural communities. Please visit www.icomms.uct.ac.za for more detail on her and her team’s work.