## 4 Internet Access for Women in Developing Countries  
ICTs have become an irreplaceable tool in society. The number of people going online to conduct everyday activities, such as business and banking, education, seeking employment, civic engagement and forming and maintaining social relationships, is increasing every day. For many of us, being digitally connected is an integral part of our day-to-day lives and it is difficult to imagine having to function without Internet access. For certain groups of people, such as women in developing countries, the Internet has real potential to mitigate or even remove the barriers that have precluded them from participating more fully in digital society. However, although their lower starting point provides for greater possible gains, these women continue to face gender-related discrimination that prevents them from accessing the full benefits of ICTs [7]. Few statistics on gender and ICT are available because many governments do not collect ICT statistics and rarely are they disaggregated by sex. Observational and anecdotal evidence [14] have identified a gender component to the digital divide in developing countries, but there is little data to document it. In 2005, the Digital Opportunity Index was introduced with the aim of tracking the progress made in bridging the digital divide. The DOI was built on three themes--opportunity, infrastructure and utilisation--which are not gender specific. The DOI does not collect sex-disaggregated statistics; its stated aim is to assess infrastructure according to household data, which assumes equal access for all members of a household, thereby ignoring some of the fundamental constraints to ICT access and use for many women [18]. As such, although it is evident that a gender digital divide exists in developing countries, it is difficult to know exactly how many women are accessing the Internet due to the failure of existing research to distinguish between opportunity of access and actual use of the Internet; socio-cultural factors are not taken into account. According to [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] [19] the gender digital divide is one of the most significant inequalities amplified by the digital revolution. Of the few studies that have sought to address Internet use specifically, most have found that women in developing countries are significantly less likely to use the Internet than men. Women are estimated to constitute 25% or less of Internet users in Africa, 22% in Asia, 38% in Latin America, and a mere 6% in the Middle East [20]. Less than 10% of Internet users in Guinea and Djibouti are women, less than 20% in Nepal and less than 25% in India. Only 20% of Internet users in Greece are women and slightly more than 25% in Portugal [14]. In Africa (where the gender digital divide is thought to be the widest), in 11 of the 13 countries, more men than women use the Internet. In one of the most technologically advanced countries, Kenya, 21% of men and 11% of women (in the population sample used for this study) had used the Internet in August 2008. African women are also less literate: In Kenya, 77.2% of men compared to 68% of women. Fewer women are actively working or studying--81.4% of Kenyan men and 49.9% of women--and women generally have less income. While 29.8% of Kenyan men belong to the top 25% income group of the country, only.6% of women do. Controlling for these three variables (literacy, actively working or studying and belonging to the top income group) the gender digital divide disappears in most African countries. The results of this study suggest that the discrimination women face in many aspects of social life--employment, literacy and income--replicate the inequalities in ICT usage [7]. Similar results have been observed in developed countries also. In a study by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [9], a strong correlation was observed between digital inequalities in computer and Internet use and pre-existing inequalities.