Women’s income generation through mobile Internet: a study of focus group data from Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda

Abstract

For many women in resource-constrained environments, mobile phones are the first and foremost information and communication technology (ICT) used. In theory, the increasing pervasiveness of mobiles and mobile Internet across developing countries should provide growing opportunities to women, especially in terms of earning through small, on-the-fly jobs, using the very mobility aspect of the devices. Using Donner’s six affordances of mobile Internet and Cornwall’s discussion of what women’s empowerment means, we analyze data from 30 focus groups conducted with 18 to 25-year-olds earning under $2 a day in peri-urban areas of Nairobi, Kenya, Accra, Ghana and Jinja, Uganda). We explore the relation between the affordances of mobile Internet and structural changes in the economic and societal status of subjects, as reflected in the narratives of women adopters. We find that such affordances, while leading to new mechanisms for income generation, at least in our focus groups, do not result in changes of societal structures: older cultural stereotypes are built around adoption of the new technology, and policies underlying economic activities are hardly challenged by digitalization. This problematizes the extent to which the mobile Internet can be universally conceived as a tool for income generation, and by extension as a long-term, secure means for the empowerment of many women.

Keywords:

• Mobile Internet
• income generation
• women and mobile phones
• women entrepreneurs and mobile phones
• affordances

Note

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Note in fact, the difference in terminology in distinguishing between connectivity as technical and access as social (Roman & Colle, 2002).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Savita Bailur

Dr. Savita Bailur is a Research Director with Caribou Digital (www.cariboudigital.net) and an external lecturer in the Media and Communications Department at LSE. She has a PhD from LSE, was an Assistant Professor at the University of Manchester and has worked for organizations including UN Women, Omidyar, World Bank, mySociety and Microsoft Research India.

Silvia Masiero

Dr Silvia Masiero is a Lecturer in International Development at the School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University. Her research is centred on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in socio-economic development, with a focus on the implications of digital technologies for anti-poverty programmes and emergency management.