In many lower-income countries, women lag men in phone ownership and usage for a variety of economic and normative reasons. This resource investigates two approaches that close the digital gender gaps. The first approach is a statewide programme which distributed millions of smartphones, along with free data, to women across the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. The second approach is a study that layered digital literacy training on top of the smartphone distribution programme. The investigation found that despite initially reversing the gender gap in smartphone ownership, the smartphone distribution programme had no long-term impact on digital gender gaps. On the other hand, the low-cost digital literacy training had lasting impacts by reducing digital gender gaps and increasing women’s smartphone use.
