Gendered digital divide is a long-standing international issue, especially in situations where it has not been fully analyzed, thus limiting the place of women in digital economies and societies on similar grounds. The research paper presents a qualitative synthesis with a quantitative aspect of 93 peer-reviewed sources and clarifies the overwhelming prevalence of women-specific digital barriers across the access, utilization, and outcome dimensions. Methodologically, the investigation addresses the multidimensionality and intersectionality nature of women to be digitally excluded and coded by theme, frequency, assessed regionally, and synthesized by network. Findings show that first-, second-, and third-order variations in digital divides are significantly geographically uneven, and education and digital skill levels turn out to be prevailing limitations to the reduction of digital inequality, especially to women in underserved and marginalized communities.
Keywords
Gendered Digital Inequality, Underserved Communities, Women’s Digital Inclusion, Digital Inequality, Technology Adoption.
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CRediT Author Statement
The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows:
Conceptualization: Anandakumar Haldorai and Lin Xiu;
Methodology: Lin Xiu;
Data Curation: Lin Xiu;
Writing- Original Draft Preparation: Anandakumar Haldorai;
Visualization: Anandakumar Haldorai;
Supervision: Anandakumar Haldorai;
Validation: Anandakumar Haldorai and Lin Xiu;
Writing- Reviewing and Editing: Anandakumar Haldorai and Lin Xiu;
All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Author(s) thanks to Dr. Anandakumar Haldorai for this research completion and support.
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Anandakumar Haldorai
Center for Research and Development, Sri Eshwar College of Engineering, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
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Anandakumar Haldorai and Lin Xiu, “A Multilevel Cross-Regional Analysis of Gendered Digital Inequality in Underserved Contexts”, Journal of Digital Business and International Marketing, vol.2, no.2, pp. 060-071, April 2026, doi: 10.64026/JDBIM/2026007.