The shocking reality of India’s digital divide came in light in a tragically in June this year when a 14-year-old girl died by suicide in Kerala. She was distressed over not having access to any digital device to attend her online lessons. While the above is a tragic example of India’s digital divide in educational access in general, it is important to know that this digital divide, acute as it is, is further marked by severe gender disparity.
Even before one seriously considers India’s more recent digital divide concerning access to education, one has to be aware of the issue of general, non-digital access to education which is marked by a sharp gender divide.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2019, the convener of the Right to Education (RTE) Forum in India had bemoaned the state of girls’ education in India: “[T]he current scenario of girls’ education in India is very precarious. Nearly 40% of adolescent girls aged 15-18 years are not attending any educational institution. About 30% of girls from the poorest families have never set foot inside a classroom.”
Such is the background of the existing and entrenched gender disparity in general educational access in India. When the nation was confronted with the prospect of large-scale remote, digital education on account of Covid-19, the gendered digital divide was exposed in a stark manner.
A recent news report outlines the need for digital access for women: “The NSSO’s 75th Round Survey on education suggests that in rural India, of every 100 female students who drop out of secondary school (class 10), twenty do so because they are engaged in domestic activities…Second, once this limited scope is coupled with the additional requirements posed by the online mode of education, the gendered outlook within families will tend to encourage more women to withdraw from enrolment compared to their male counterparts.”
A lower-priority for girls’ access to digital education hurts them disproportionately. A report on girl-students in rural Maharashtra stated that “most of the families whose children go to government schools have one smartphone with internet and, according to teachers, parents would prefer to continue boys’ online education instead of that of girls.”
As per the Internet and Mobile Association of India report, while 67% of men had access to the internet, this figure was only at 33% for women. This disparity is more prominent in rural India, where the figures are 72% and 28% for men and women, respectively.
With such a lopsided reality of digital access to education, tilted so unfavourably against girls, it is no wonder that there is an all-around worry that it would only make the existing educational divide worse with possible dire social consequences for girls in low-income families.
The coronavirus lockdown has seen an increase in the burden on girls with household chores and taking care of their siblings. If these girls drop out of school, we will witness a spike in early marriage, child labour and trafficking in the country. For a nation that wishes to attain various goals of development and growth, it is crucial that there is the realization of every citizen’s potential, regardless of gender. India already has quite a dismal record on account of its deliberate neglect of equitable gender norms.
The much-publicized 2019 Global Hunger Index underlined India’s severe malnutrition problem, but it also exposed the direct connection with women’s nutritional levels. As an Observer Foundation (ORF) analysis put it, “It establishes a direct correlation between malnutritioned women rearing a malnutritioned child and emphasizes the need to economically empower women to include them in the process of decision making to ensure the right to proper food, nutrition and health of the households.”
The gendering of the issue of malnutrition is also an outcome of the gendered provision of basic rights such as education. Female literacy is one of the most powerful tools to improve a society’s health and economic well-being.
But with the gendered divide that is the reality of digital access in India, it will probably push the access to education for women back from the precarious position it already is at. The gendered digital divide represents a cascading effect that portends severe disadvantages to women in India, in matters of what one might broadly call their empowerment.
The middle- and upper-classes are euphoric about the new reality of online everything. These privileged few provide the sheen of normalcy for access to online goods and services. They can afford the expensive gadgets—at a minimum a smartphone—to access the digital world. But, as a teacher in the US public schools said, “being a digital consumer and a digital learner are two different things.”
The minuscule and misleading percentage of the population which indulges in digital consumerism obscures the difficulties faced by the vast majority of the people. The difficulties are especially real for girls in India, for whom access to the digital world is mediated not just by economics but also by gender norms. If we want the women of India to be holding half the sky, then it is imperative that their access to tools of empowerment and inclusion as represented by education, especially the current reality of digital education, be just and equitable.