Gendered access to digital capital and mobile phone ownership among young people in Rakai, Uganda

Abstract

This article examines how gendered access to digital capital—in the form of the social and economic resources needed to own and use a mobile phone—is connected to key adult milestones, such as securing employment and engaging in romantic relationships. Descriptive statistical analysis of 11,030 young people aged 15–24 in Rakai, Uganda indicated that men were more likely to own mobile phones than women. Analysis of qualitative interviews with young people (N = 31) and ethnographic participant observations among young people (N = 24) add nuance and depth to the observed gender difference. We go beyond a ‘categorical’ approach to gender (i.e. comparing rates between men and women) to examine how access to digital capital is gendered both for men and for women. Mobile phone ownership both reproduces and destabilises gendered social organisation in ways that have implications for economic opportunities, social connections, HIV risk and overall health and well-being. Young men had greater access to the benefits of mobile phone ownership, whereas young women's access to those benefits was impeded by covert and overt gendered mechanisms of control that limited access to digital capital. Findings suggest that mhealth initiatives, increasingly deployed to reach under-resourced populations, must take into account gendered access to digital capital.