Billions of women miss out on mobile banking

Millions of us own a mobile phone. In the developed world, most of us own our first phone by the time we get to secondary school.

But for women in the developing world it’s a very different story.

In 2016, over 1.7 billion women in lower and middle income countries still have yet to get their hands on one. That equates to 200m more men owning a mobile phone than women.

These shocking figures were revealed by GSMA Connected Women, an initiative led by phone operators from across the world that hopes to close the mobile gender gap. The group found women in developing countries are being left behind without access to financial services on their phones which could help them to find work and lift them out of poverty.

Women being left behind

Mobile money services have overtaken cash as the most popular way to make payments and send remittances in many developing countries, underlining why equal access to mobile phones is so critical. Without them, many women in developing countries are being held back.

South Asia is one particularly bad example where women there are 38% less likely to own a mobile phone.

But even when women do own phones, they are significantly less likely to use data services like mobile banking and messaging apps. The most recent data available shows women in lower and middle income countries are 36% less likely to have used mobile money.

Cultural factors are just one of the ways that women are being cut out of the mobile revolution, but things could be about to change.

Historic new initiative

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a group of operators announced a historic new commitment to help women in the developed world get connected. So far operators in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Maldives, Burma, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Turkey have pledged their support.

These pioneering companies have agreed to increase their female staff and create programmes to help improve women’s digital literacy in the developing world. It’s hoped by doing this more women will buy their first phones and access mobile financial services for the first time.

Owning a mobile phone is something many of us take for granted. We can’t afford to women in the developing world to miss out on the mobile money revolution.