Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh: Every afternoon, as the sun dips and the network bars flicker uncertainly, 19-year-old Rani* climbs to the edge of her tin-roofed house in rural Uttar Pradesh. This is the only spot where her YouTube lectures load without freezing. She balances her borrowed phone on one hand, notebook in the other, constantly alert both to losing the signal and to being noticed.
The phone is not hers. It belongs to her brother.
Rani is a first-generation college student, enrolled in a government college, and she can’t afford tuition. YouTube classes have become her routine. Her family owns a single smartphone, controlled by her elder brother. He decides when she can use it, for how long, and for what purpose. “Classes only,” he tells her. Afterwards, the phone is taken back, checked thoroughly for call logs, messages, and browser history. “He says it’s for my safety,” Rani says quietly. “The internet is not good for girls.”
In a country that proudly claims over 850 million internet users, stories like Rani’s are rarely part of the celebration. India is the world’s second-largest internet market, yet millions of women, especially from marginalised caste and class backgrounds, remain digitally invisible. For them, the smartphone is not a tool of empowerment but a site of surveillance, negotiation, and control.
Across rural and semi-urban India, women’s access to mobile phones is often mediated by male family members, fathers, brothers, and husbands. According to multiple studies, women are significantly less likely than men to own a smartphone, and far more likely to use a shared device. Ownership, when it exists, is frequently conditional.
Shabana*, a 32-year-old homemaker from a village in Saharanpur, owns a basic smartphone technically. In reality, it is her husband who controls it. He insists on knowing whom she speaks to, limits her screen time, and often takes the phone with him when he leaves the house. “He says too much phone spoils women,” she says. “He worries I might talk to someone or learn something I shouldn’t.”
Under the guise of “safety,” digital control becomes an extension of patriarchal authority. Location tracking, password sharing, and constant monitoring are normalised as care. What is rarely acknowledged is how this constant scrutiny erodes privacy, confidence, and agency.
For women like Shabana, the internet is not a space of freedom but another room where the door never fully closes.
Digital exclusion in India is not gendered alone; it is deeply caste-marked. Marginalised caste women face layered barriers, limited resources, social surveillance, and systemic invisibility. Even when they manage to access the internet, their voices rarely travel far.
Asha*, a 24-year-old Dalit woman from the Noor Basti area of Saharanpur, learned embroidery from her mother and grandmother. During the pandemic, she tried to sell her handmade crafts online through social media and local marketplaces. She borrowed a smartphone from a neighbour, created an account, and uploaded photos of her work. Orders were few and inconsistent.
“I see others selling similar things and getting so many likes,” she says. “But my posts don’t reach people.” Without knowledge of algorithms, paid promotions, or digital branding and without trust in online payments, Asha struggles to stay visible. Buyers often hesitate once they learn she doesn’t have a UPI account in her own name or a stable digital presence.
This is algorithmic invisibility layered onto social marginalisation. Whose stories trend online, whose businesses grow, whose content is amplified these are not neutral outcomes. They reflect existing hierarchies, now reproduced in digital spaces.
For young women, digital denial has direct consequences for education. Online forms, scholarship portals, exam updates, and learning platforms assume personal access to devices and the internet. For girls who rely on shared phones, this assumption becomes a barrier.
Rani recalls missing an important scholarship deadline because her brother was away with the phone. “I couldn’t even check the date properly,” she says. When she finally submitted the form, it was too late.
The cost is not just academic. Constant dependence breeds hesitation. Many young women describe feeling anxious about asking for the phone, guilty for needing it, and fearful of being accused of “misuse.” Over time, this discourages curiosity and ambition.
“I don’t search freely,” Rani admits.
Living in a hyper-connected world while being personally disconnected creates a quiet emotional strain. Women speak of feeling left behind, out of touch, and ashamed. They hear about opportunities, news, and conversations second-hand, often too late to participate.
There is also fear, fear of making a mistake online, fear of being blamed if something goes wrong, fear of confirming stereotypes that women cannot handle technology responsibly. This fear is internalised early and reinforced daily.
“It feels like the internet is not meant for us,” Shabana says. “Like it belongs to someone else.”
India’s “Digital India” vision focuses heavily on infrastructure broadband highways, digital services, cashless payments. While connectivity has expanded, access remains uneven and deeply social. Policies often count SIM cards and connections, not control or autonomy.
A household with one smartphone is considered “digitally connected,” even if the device is inaccessible to women. Training programs assume device ownership. Financial inclusion initiatives push digital payments without addressing trust, literacy, or gendered control over bank accounts and phones.
What is missing is a recognition that digital access is not merely technical it is political and social. Without addressing patriarchal norms, caste hierarchies, and power dynamics within households, connectivity alone cannot bridge the gender digital divide.
For marginalised women, owning a smartphone is not just about calls or data. It is about privacy, choice, and the right to exist fully in a digital world. It is the ability to learn without permission, to earn without intermediaries, to speak without being watched.
Rani still climbs her rooftop every day. She still returns the phone when her class ends. But she dreams of the day she can buy her own device with her own money.
Until that day comes, India’s digital success story remains incomplete, its silences as telling as its statistics.
*Names changed to protect identities.
(Musheera Ashraf is a Laadli Media Fellow. The opinions and views expressed are those of the author. Laadli and UNFPA do not necessarily endorse the views)
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