Risky for Girls But Safe for Boys: Mobile Phones, Youth Subcultures, and the Social Reproduction of Gender

To understand the ways in which low-resource youth access and use mobile phones, we carried out a literature review and conducted community-based fieldwork. The literature review, where we analyzed 67 papers to scope out existing research on the topic, identify gaps in the current research, and discuss fresh perspectives and approaches, is published in our UNICEF report, ‘Adolescent Sub-cultures and Smartphones: Exploring the Implications for Gender, Sexuality and Rights’.

We then conducted field research with low-resource communities in Mumbai, employing focus group discussions with parents, young men, young women and community leaders. We found that along with an increase in the ownership of mobile phones and access to the Internet in India, there is a steady manifestation of gender, caste and class barriers to access and use on the one hand, and moral panics about how these technologies disrupt traditional forms of control over girls and women, on the other. Beyond controlling their physical mobility, social interactions and access to public spaces, families extend traditional forms of gendered control to the ways in which young girls can access and use mobile phones. These disciplinary mechanisms fit the assemblage of patriarchy and markets, through the continuous social reproduction of “good girls” who avoid using technology and “smart boys” who use technology to approved ends. The findings from this fieldwork are being published in a book chapter that is forthcoming in 2022.