Understanding the ICT Use Gender Gap in Latin America

Abstract

Even though women represent more than 50% of the total Latin American population, they face a set of barriers that do not allow them to be in equal conditions with respect to their male peers. The ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) field is not an exception. The possibility to access and use the Internet is not evenly distributed between men and women (Gray, Gainous, & Wagner, 2016)and factors such as education, employment or discrimination could play a fundamental role in explaining gender differences in ICT use (Robinson et al., 2015). However, the existing literature about this topic is scarce, especially in Latin America; moreover, such an analysis becomes more challenging when attempting to include all the different dimensions that ICT use involve). In this sense, our research analyzes the factors that determine the gender ICT use gap, integrating the different dimensions that ICT use involve. The main results indicate that in Paraguay and Argentina factors like occupation, education or age play a more important role in explaining the ICT use gender gap. In contrast, unobserved factors do so in Peru and Guatemala.

Keywords: gender, ICT index, internet, mobile phones, gender gap decomposition

JEL Classification: O10, D63, J16