“How can they even talk about giving smartphones to our teenage daughters? Will they come to our rescue when the girls run away from home with somebody they met on the internet?” That was the conversation I overheard outside a government school where I was conducting a digital literacy and safety workshop for girls in the age group of 14-16. The parents were uncomfortable with their daughters being taught how to operate smartphones for better learning purposes.
This is 2023, the almost post-Covid era. We all have seen girls dropping out of schools during the Covid-19 era and some of us have read the 2020 policy brief by UN Women that stated that Covid-19 has undone and reversed much of the gender equality efforts undertaken by governments, organisations, and institutions.
"Bad girls use a smartphone": Understanding the relationship between gender and technology
What do parents and/or guardians have to do with digital inclusion? The answer is quite long, but let us take a reference character and understand it for the purpose of this article. Nisha is a 15-year-old girl studying in a government school in one of the metro cities in India. Nisha spends around 6 to 7 hours of her day in school, and the rest of the time, Nisha stays at home, helps with household chores, does her homework, and other daily life activities.
At Nisha’s home, there is one smartphone that is shared by the family. Nisha has a brother Sameer who is of the same age and goes to another school nearby. Nisha has never used the smartphone because her family says that it is of no use to her and rather she should focus on being a ‘good girl’. Nisha’s mother says that the smartphone will help Sameer take/share notes from/with his classmates in order to have a decent grade.
Let us understand some highlights from the above case study:
Family asset and liability- There is a prioritisation regarding who can use smartphones in the family and for what purpose; the parents of two adolescents of the same age from the same family have different perspectives on smartphone usage by their son and daughter. According to the parents, the smartphone will help their son study and possibly get good grades and it affects the family because the son will go on to become the man of the family, whereas the daughter will be married off and become a part of another family.
Binary of gender stereotypes- The parents want their daughter to be a 'good girl' and not use a smartphone. The implied meaning here is that a smartphone will make Nisha a 'bad girl’ because she will possibly access the internet and social media, where parents have lesser control over what the daughter learns or who she meets. The idea of a ‘good girl’ is a patriarchal concept where checklists are made, and attributes are decided to fit into society's standards of being ‘marriageable’. So, even if a smartphone enables an adolescent girl to access YouTube videos on thermodynamics, the importance of it is comparatively lesser than her marriageability checklist. The same device will make a boy learn better and potentially career-ready, whereas it will make a girl simply a ‘bad girl’.
The question of girls’ agency- Drawing from what a group of parents was talking about outside a government school, according to parents of young girls, access to smartphone/ internet is equivalent to bringing shame to the family because ‘ultimately the girls will run away from home’. Most of us have written the ‘Is technology a boon or curse?’ essay during our school days, but hardly any of us got to decide whether technology will be a boon or curse in our lives. Similarly, the societal desire to curb girls’ and women’s agency and take decisions on behalf of them (regarding what a girl can study, which coaching she goes to, at what age and who she marries) widens the digital gender gap. A common thread that connects all these factors is the ‘boy question,’ i.e.,
- Will there be boys in that online coaching class?
- Will there be boys on my daughter’s social media account?
- Will my daughter talk to boys on the Internet?
Involving the parents in digital inclusion strategy
The pressing issue for parents and/or guardians is about 'protecting' girls from this evolving world of the internet. Therefore, organisations/ institutions working to build the digital capacity of girls must make it a priority to ‘un-protect’ girls from the possibilities of a digital world and technology. For adolescent girls who are enrolled in school, digital literacy and learning cannot be a reality until and unless parents/ guardians/ families are onboarded.
So, as we build those digital literacy and safety curricula for girls, we should also prioritise building an ecosystem by creating awareness among the parents/ guardians. Most adolescent girls spend their maximum time at home and therefore practice the rules and regulations of their household.
Honestly, they don’t have a say about whether they can use a smartphone. The prioritisation of boys over girls by families for providing smartphones has been explicitly evident since the Covid-19 era. The only way to make it a story of the past and progress towards digital gender equality is to bring the parents closer to our digital inclusion strategy.
To achieve digital gender inclusion, the system cannot rely on 1 hour of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) lab training in schools, and parents/guardians must be made aware that a) it’s okay for a girl to use a smartphone, b) there is no such thing as ‘bad girl’.