Gendering the digital divide: a systematic review of women’s digital inclusion challenges and emerging research directions

Abstract

Purpose – This study aims to systematically review the extant literature on the gender digital divide, focussing on the barriers women face in achieving digital inclusion. It further identifies research patterns and gaps and proposes future directions to advance the understanding in the area. Design/methodology/approach – The study conducted bibliometric and thematic analyses on 93 empirical articles in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database, spanning from 2011 to 2025. Findings – The review maps the intellectual terrain of the gender digital divide and identifies the barriers women face across its three dimensions: access, usage and outcomes. The findings reveal that economic constraints are the primary impediment at the access level, while the lack of digital literacy and skills emerges as the critical challenge at the usage level. Furthermore, socio-cultural barriers significantly hinder women from fully harnessing the potential of digital technology. Women in African and Asian regions mostly face access and outcome levels of the digital divide, whereas Western women are more exposed to the outcome-level divide. The study underscores the need for future studies to conduct an in-depth examination of barriers through an intersectionality lens and to examine the gendered disparities across digitised sectors of education, employment, governance and health. Originality/value – This study makes an insightful contribution by unveiling the bibliometric landscape of the gender digital divide and further categorising the women-specific barriers region-wise and at three levels of the digital divide: access, usage and outcome. It ranks the barriers at each level of divide through frequent referencing and illustrates it in an explanatory framework. The study suggests further examination of the divide through various digitised sectors of the economy and advocates for identifying sustainable solutions through an intersectional analysis.