Can Phones Create Jobs? New Evidence From Interventions Providing Access and Connectivity

While the spread of mobile phones worldwide is undeniable, women are still less likely than men to own a mobile phone and use key services like mobile internet and mobile money.

According to GSMA’s 2025 mobile gender gap report, the gender gap in mobile phone ownership in low- and middle-income countries has remained largely unchanged since 2017. Women in these countries are 8% less likely than men to own a mobile phone and 14% less likely to own a smartphone. 

Perhaps most importantly, the smartphone gender gap showed little signs of improvement from 2017 to 2024, resulting in approximately 200 million fewer women owning smartphones today than men. Affordability, lack of literacy and digital skills, safety and security concerns, and perceived relevance remain the top barriers to both mobile internet adoption and mobile ownership among women.

To support our learning partnership with the Gates Foundation, in 2024 Caribou conducted a rapid impact evidence synthesis, focusing our efforts on 14 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the impacts of interventions to address data or device costs.

Both mobile broadband access and smartphone distribution consistently show significant positive impacts on household consumption (a reliable proxy measure for income). Results from impact studies in Nigeria, Tanzania, the Philippines, and Senegal, comparing households that gained mobile internet connectivity or smartphones with those who did not, found that the magnitude of the impact was substantial, ranging from 5.8% to 20.8% increase in household consumption, based on the country of the study, or whether they were offering connectivity or access to phones.

Impacts of mobile connectivity and smartphone distributions on HH consumption (%)

Evidence from Tanzania also shows a difference between phone types. Smartphones delivered the most substantial impact (20.8%) compared to basic phones (8.2%) and cash transfers (6.5%). 

Mobile phone ownership has demonstrated substantial positive impact on women’s labor force participation in Pakistan (5.47 percentage points) and Bangladesh (1.5 percentage points). This suggests that device access itself is an important consideration.

There is also evidence that mobile internet can have a mostly positive, significant impact on female labor force participation. RCTs testing the causal impacts of expanding from 2G to 3G/4G mobile internet by comparing with control groups show strong positive impacts on female labor force participation in multiple contexts, with statistically significant results in 15 developing countries. 

​The consistency of positive findings across various impact studies, methodologies, and geographic contexts lends credibility to the hypothesis that mobile phones and mobile internet can be powerful tools for enhancing women’s economic participation.

Most of the studies involved in the evidence synthesis examined the impacts of digital connectivity on either household consumption or women’s labor force participation. Household consumption is considered to be an important proxy for poverty reduction for several important reasons. First, in many contexts, particularly emerging markets, economic resources are often pooled and shared at the household level. Second, consumption data is typically more reliable and comprehensive when collected at the household level rather than the individual level. Finally, using household consumption as a proxy for income provides a more holistic view of economic well-being than individual earning metrics alone, especially in contexts where women’s economic contributions may be underreported or take non-monetary forms. 

However, household-level approaches have important limitations for understanding gender equity and women’s empowerment. Research demonstrates that intra-household inequality can be substantial, with increases in consumption and welfare often distributed unequally among household members. While some studies included in this review show direct positive effects on individual women’s empowerment and economic activities, evidence also indicates that barriers such as shared device use, restrictions on women’s access, and dependence on others for digital financial services can limit individual benefits. Household consumption measures provide valuable insights into overall welfare effects but may not fully capture these nuanced individual-level outcomes, particularly regarding women’s agency and control over digital resources and services.

Increases in labor force participation are likewise considered important, as jobs and income generation are traditionally considered primary markers of women’s economic empowerment. However, additional evidence from this review found that these increases in women’s labor force participation are not always “new jobs.” Rather, they often represent a complex redistribution of work types among men and women.

Research from Chiplunkar and Goldberg spanning 14 countries found that men experienced statistically significant increases in self-employment and wage employment and a decrease in unpaid work due to only a 1 percentage point increase in 3G coverage. Women, on the other hand, saw proportionally smaller gains in most employment categories. This means that in a region where 30% of men and women were initially in wage employment, a 10 percentage point increase in 3G coverage would raise this to 31.6%, while women’s wage employment would actually decrease slightly to 29.9%. This data suggests that as connectivity improves, men appear to transition from unpaid work to more formal employment, while some women shift into unpaid positions, inadvertently reinforcing gender inequalities by shifting unpaid labor burdens to women.

Although device access is important, giving out smartphones may not be enough for sustained impact. An intervention providing smartphones to women in Tanzania increased households’ annual consumption per capita by 20% compared to the control group, mediated by women’s control and use of smartphones. Yet by the end-line survey, only 34% of those in the smartphone treatment group still possessed their handsets 13 months later. Literacy influenced phone turnover; women with higher literacy levels were more likely to have the smartphone at the end-line survey and reported significantly higher levels of phone use.

Ethnographic research with women in South Africa corroborates this finding: participants frequently lost access through handset theft, device breakdown, and economic constraints. Even when devices remained physically accessible, sustained use was undermined by affordability concerns (‘times I do not have airtime’), forgotten passwords that couldn’t be reset without computer access, and social restrictions within households.

Evidence from India suggests that training can significantly impact long-term smartphone adoption and usage. An intervention involving smartphone distribution saw a statistically significant short-term boost in usage (+10.3 percentage points). But these gains disappeared completely over time without training. Only when smartphones were bundled with digital literacy training did women maintain their use of the phone over time for business purposes or to access financial information, showing that skills are essential for technology adoption to stick.

The evidence highlights the complex social and financial constraints facing low-income women. Simply providing hardware doesn’t address barriers like technology intimidation, lack of digital literacy, and social norms that may discourage women’s technology use. Sustained digital inclusion requires simultaneously addressing both physical access and capability barriers—what scholars have termed the shift from a focus on the “digital divide” to “digital inclusion,” recognizing that access alone is insufficient without the skills, support, and social contexts needed for meaningful technology use.

The evidence is clear: Mobile internet connectivity and smartphone access can significantly boost economic opportunities for women in emerging markets. But realizing their full potential requires a nuanced approach by funders, policymakers, and intervention designers. Our synthesis of 14 rigorous studies reveals that, while these technologies can increase household consumption and boost female labor force participation across diverse contexts, simply distributing devices is insufficient.

Sustained use of smartphones and internet connectivity hinge on bundling smartphones with appropriate skills training, addressing gender-specific barriers, and considering household dynamics—including the concerning trend of women taking on more unpaid work as men transition to formal employment. The data consistently shows that digital inclusion initiatives must go beyond access alone to create lasting impact, suggesting that policymakers and program designers should integrate targeted training, respect for women’s property rights, and complementary support services to truly bridge the digital gender gap and drive meaningful economic empowerment for women.

Let’s work together to close the digital access gap.

Programs that improve mobile phone and data connectivity are most effective when grounded in evidence and designed with end users in mind. If you’re looking to synthesize insights, design smarter interventions, or explore new ways to support meaningful digital inclusion, we’d be excited to partner with you. Reach out to Niamh Barry (niamh@caribou.global), Caribou’s Chief Impact Officer.