Mobile Phones and Gender Norms: Evidence from Afghanistan

This paper examines the impact of mobile phone expansion on gender norms in Afghanistan. We combine cell tower data from the country’s largest operator with nationally representative survey data on attitudes toward women’s education, employment, and leadership. Using lightning strike intensity as an instrument for network expansion, we find that greater mobile access lead to more progressive views toward women’s education and employment, particularly among men. Women’s support for female leadership also increased while men’s stated views did not change. We explore information and labor supply channels as potential mechanisms driving these effects. We find little evidence for a labor market participation channel, suggesting that information access—both direct and via networks—is more likely to explain the observed attitudinal changes. While we find no downstream effects on women’s schooling or employment participation, mobile expansion increased votes for female candidates, the number of women running, and the share elected to office. These results suggest that expanding access to mobile technology can weaken restrictive gender norms even in settings with strong cultural constraints.