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Accepted Paper:

Women's wellbeing and the role of digital technology : An Evidence from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (2017-2018)  
Hania Shabbir (Lahore School of Economics) Fariya Hashmat (Lahore School of Economics) Ahmad Nawaz (Lahore School of Economics)

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore women's sustainable development with special focus on mobile phones and internet as medium of awareness, communication and skill enhancement. Paper will also reflect on effect of women's beliefs and physical environment on their wellbeing in existing patriarchal structure.

Paper long abstract:

Women's subjective and material wellbeing enhances their capabilities and functionings to resist patriarchal structures and bridge gender-inequality for just sustainable futures. However, the advent of digital culture has redefined sustainable development by providing them more opportunities. Therefore the conventional wellbeing literature needs to account for this digital culture in the course of women's wellbeing. The awareness of Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs) signifies the intensity of the digital culture prevailing in a society. The exiting literature, pertinent to digital culture, suggests that use of internet reduces disparities among the people by increasing productivity and strengthening human and social capital at large. However, its impact on women's wellbeing in existing patriarchal structure, when their rights are being denied in practice, is rarely accounted for in empirical literature. Against this backdrop, this paper analyses women's sustainable development and the role of digital culture, as proxied by the awareness, and the use of mobile phones and internet, as an enabler to the environment conducive for women's sustainable development in the wake of intersectional oppression.

Our data set is composed of 74,010 women, aged between 15-49 years, and is taken from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (2017-2018). The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression technique is employed. Our findings suggest that digital culture has played a significant role in enhancing women's wellbeing through various mechanisms. This paper has very important policy implications for stakeholders in the patriarchal societies, such as Pakistan which is ranked 153rd out of 156 countries on the gender parity index(2021).

Panel P32a
Role of Digital Technology and Innovations in Bridging Gender-inequality for Just Sustainable Futures.
  Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -