IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v14y2025i3p139-d1599330.html

Mobile Phone Use and Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: An Analysis of the Bangladesh Financial Inclusion Insights Survey 2017

Author

Listed:
  • Ashim Kumar Nandi

    (Department of Sociology, University of Barishal, Barishal 8254, Bangladesh)

  • Ann-Zofie Duvander

    (Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden)

Abstract

Despite steady economic and social development in Bangladesh, women are in an underprivileged situation in many ways. This study explores the association between the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh. This study employs ordinary least squares regression, the ordered logit model, and the multinomial logit model, using Financial Inclusion Insights (2017) Survey data, to investigate the relationship between mobile phone use and women’s empowerment. The study’s main result indicates that mobile phone use facilitates women’s empowerment in general, but the impact needs to be considered for different groups of women. Housewives who are restricted within the household are impacted less than non-housewives by mobile phone use, contrary to our expectations. Also heads of households and spouses of heads of households, who are in very different positions in a patriarchal family structure, are similarly impacted by mobile phone use. This result implies that ICT only affects the empowerment of women who are not restricted to the household, and we conclude that ICT access alone is not enough to ensure women’s awareness about their rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashim Kumar Nandi & Ann-Zofie Duvander, 2025. "Mobile Phone Use and Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: An Analysis of the Bangladesh Financial Inclusion Insights Survey 2017," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-23, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:3:p:139-:d:1599330
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/3/139/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/3/139/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Seema Jayachandran, 2015. "The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 63-88, August.
    2. Bayes, Abdul, 2001. "Infrastructure and rural development: insights from a Grameen Bank village phone initiative in Bangladesh," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 25(2-3), pages 261-272, September.
    3. Manolis Manioudis & Giorgos Meramveliotakis, 2022. "Broad strokes towards a grand theory in the analysis of sustainable development: a return to the classical political economy," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 866-878, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hina Amber & Bezawit Beyene Chichaibelu, 2023. "Narrowing the gender digital divide in Pakistan: Mobile phone ownership and female labor force participation," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 1354-1382, August.
    2. Simisola Johnson, 2022. "Women deserve better: A discussion on COVID‐19 and the gendered organization in the new economy," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 639-649, March.
    3. S Anukriti & Catalina Herrera‐Almanza & Praveen K. Pathak & Mahesh Karra, 2020. "Curse of the Mummy‐ji: The Influence of Mothers‐in‐Law on Women in India†," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(5), pages 1328-1351, October.
    4. Hui Yang & Jingye Li & Stefan Sieber & Kaisheng Long, 2025. "Does Digital Village Construction Affect the Sustainable Intensification of Cultivated Land Use? Evidence from Rural China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-24, April.
    5. Lin Zhang & Yuanyuan Shang & Ying Huang & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2022. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 145-179, January.
    6. Jensen, Robert T., 2009. "Information, Efficiency And Welfare In Agricultural Markets," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 53206, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Seebacher, Moritz, 2023. "Pathways to progress: The complementarity of bicycles and road infrastructure for girls’ education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    8. Ranasinghe, Ashantha, 2024. "Gender specific distortions, entrepreneurship and misallocation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    9. Gaurav Dhamija & Punarjit Roychowdhury & Binay Shankar, 2025. "Does urbanization empower women? Evidence from India," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-47, March.
    10. Jaiswal, Sreeja & Balietti, Anca & Schäffer, Daniel, 2023. "Environmental Protection and Labor Market Composition," Working Papers 0736, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    11. Clémence Kieny & Gabriela Flores & Jürgen Maurer, 2021. "Assessing and decomposing gender differences in evaluative and emotional well-being among older adults in the developing world," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 189-221, March.
    12. Eduardo Rodrigues Sanguinet & Francisco de Borja García-García, 2023. "Rural-Urban Linkages: Regional Financial Business Services’ Integration into Chilean Agri-Food Value Chains," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-22, July.
    13. Bussolo, Maurizio & Ezebuihe, Jessy Amarachi & Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria & Poupakis, Stavros & Rahman, Tasmia & Sarma, Nayantara, 2022. "Social Norms and Gender Equality : A Descriptive Analysis for South Asia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10142, The World Bank.
    14. Aguilar-Gomez, Sandra & Arceo-Gomez, Eva O. & De la Cruz Toledo, Elia, 2026. "Inside the black box of child penalties: Unpaid work and household structure," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    15. Angelina Kissiwaa Twum & Jijian Zhang & Xuhui Ding & Joana Cobbinah, 2025. "Realizing Green Growth in Belt and Road Initiative Economies: The Roles of Financial Support, Renewable Energy, and Eco-Footprint Dynamics," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(6), pages 18738-18773, December.
    16. Herron, Charles B. & Nilakantan, Rahul & Iyengar, Deepak & Richey, Robert Glenn & Rao, Shashank, 2026. "On social inequality, financial inclusion, and poverty at the bottom of the pyramid: Is financial equity enough?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    17. Deng, Yue & Zhou, Yuqian & Hu, Dezhuang, 2023. "Grandparental childcare and female labor market behaviors: Evidence from China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    18. Akerlof, Robert & Rayo, Luis, 2020. "Narratives and the Economics of the Family," CEPR Discussion Papers 15152, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    19. Hui Wang & Yao Xu, 2024. "Optimized Decision-Making for Multi-Market Green Power Transactions of Electricity Retailers under Demand-Side Response: The Chinese Market Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-15, May.
    20. Venkat Ram Reddy Ganuthula, 2025. "AI-enabled individual entrepreneurship theory: redefining scale, capability, and sustainability in the digital age," Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-21, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:3:p:139-:d:1599330. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.