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.