ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has said that women living both in rural and urban areas are making five per cent more voice/video calls on Skype than men.

In its annual report, the PTA said on Tuesday that because of low literacy rate, women preferred to use internet platforms offering voice facilities and images over others.

It said the digital gender gap in Pakistan remained high with only 37pc mobile penetration among female population, while only 22pc social media users were women in the country.

At the same time the most visited local websites in the country are Daraz, OLX, Urdu Point and Dawn, but out of around 46 million social media users the gender gap remained wide with only 22pc of them being women as compared to 78pc men.

Most visited local websites are Daraz, OLX, Urdu Point

The PTA said that although aware of the potential benefits of the internet, women in Pakistan cannot use it primarily due to low level of literacy, inadequate ICT skills, and low affordability, apart from being financially dependent members of the family.

“Moreover, due to the local socio-cultural norms, the families of females do not approve of internet usage due to a variety of reasons, including safety and security,” it said.

Referring to the GSMA Intelligence Consumer Survey 2017-19, which was carried out in 12 countries, the PTA said Pakistan has one of the strongest rates of growth in mobile internet awareness, especially among women.

The GSMA report highlighted that the gender gap in internet awareness declined from 16pc to 11pc between 2017 and 2019.

The PTA said that for the last couple of years, the percentage of female mobile subscriptions was around only 21pc of the total subscriptions.

However, it said that large number of women use mobile connections obtained in the name of male family members.

Out of 182m mobile connections across Pakistan in the financial year 2020-21, only 38m are held by females against their CNICs, the remaining 144m connections are held by males.

Mobile penetration in the female population stands at 37pc, compared to 130pc in the male population, which means that a large number of men obtained more than one connections in their name.

Similarly the female mobile ownership in Pakistan was 50pc, compared to male ownership of 81pc.

The gap between male-female mobile ownership in the rural areas is much higher, compared to urban areas.

Female mobile ownership in Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was almost the same, that is between 23pc and 29pc, but it was relatively lower in Balochistan at 15pc.

The PTA has highlighted that South Asia also holds the world’s widest gender gap, with only 18pc of women using the Internet.

Meanwhile, on the occasion of International Women’s Day on Tuesday, Jazz announced its decision to work for increasing the proportion of female mobile broadband users by 8pc by the end of 2023.

Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim said in a tweet that the company will address the primary barriers for women to own smartphone by offering it at discount and collaborate with Meta, the parent organisation of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc, to make cyberspace safer.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2022