Download or read book Use of mobile phones by the rural poor - gender perspectives from selected Asian countries written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobile phones have been shown (though not uniformly) to positively contribute in various ways to rural development, from reducing information asymmetry, improving functional networks, to increasing access to services and finance. Yet a digital gender divide exists. When contrasted with the fact that women compromise 43% of the worlds’ agricultural labor force, this digital gender divide can inhibit rural development. There is substantial exploration of the digital gender divide in the literatur e. Yet the answers to questions regarding differential access and use of information and communication technologies are mostly inconclusive. This study tries identify the information needs of the rural poor with gender dissagregated statistics.