How do gender norms affect digital use amongst young women from small towns in India? - and to develop

Thus, supported by the Bill and Melinda project to identify key barriers to Gates Foundation, BBC Media Action undertook this project to identify gender norms limiting women’s digital use and to develop women’s mobile phone ownership and usage in targeted strategies to effectively peri-urban cities across three states in India. [...] Research findings showed our cross-functional team (creative, research, that young men are more regressive and programmatic) carried out immersions to than older men and women, and young understand the target population better across women, on gender roles (a trend three cities in the three study states - Uttar 1 Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. [...] However, young men youth (men and women in the 18-25-year age have progressive digital attitudes — group), older adults (men and women in the 26- providing a lever for change; and an 50-year age group), and community leaders. [...] Previous BBC A mixed-methods approach, comprising Media Action research showed that to empower quantitative and qualitative data collection was women to use mobile phones, further research used, with a sampling approach that ensured was needed to understand the ‘gatekeepers’ of representation of the intended target women’s phone use and the ‘gender norms at population at the state level. [...] The research also found that permission and monitoring are internalised behaviors and Norm-aligned form 22% of the sample, Norm normalised among young women, who try to ambivalent are the majority at 68% and Norm conform to societal scrutiny/ notions about progressives are 10%.