RURAL WOMEN’S SMARTPHONE ADOPTION: ASSET OR PATRIARCHAL SURVEILLANCE TOOL?

Abstract

The adoption of smart phones by rural women is hailed as a tool for empowerment, enabling access to education, health care services, financial services and social connections. Yet recent scholarship is beginning to empirically challenge the presumption of ICTs as serving as means for enhanced autonomy, and they contribute to patriarchal surveillance rather than shaping it. Through the lens of psychological, social and cultural perspectives about technology adoption, we examine how rural women are experiencing dual or mixed roles of smartphones in their life-ways. Applying a mixed-methods study design, the research combines survey data from 300 rural women and in-depth interviews of 40 participants together with their husbands and mothers-in-law from South Asia. Quantitative data indicated that using the mobile phone positively correlated with self-efficacy and social connectedness, whereas from qualitative accounts it became apparent that male kin (family members) often regulated or controlled their use of mobile phones. Results suggest a paradox of smartphones as tools for empowerment and instruments of patriarchal control. The study, therefore, recommends that digital inclusion projects should recognize and address the power relations on gendered technology use. Psychologically, the results emphasize conflicts between autonomy and monitoring informed by culturally responsive interventions.

Keywords: smartphone adoption, rural women, digital empowerment, patriarchal surveillance, gender and technology, autonomy, social psychology