- Name
- Proportion of individuals who own a mobile telephone, by sex
- Indicator purpose
- This indicator highlights mobile phone ownership.
- Abstract
- Mobile phone networks have spread rapidly over the last decade and the number of mobile-cellular subscriptions is quasi equal to the number of the people living on earth. However, not every person uses, or owns a mobile-cellular telephone. Mobile phone ownership is important to track gender equality since the mobile phone is a personal device that, if owned and not just shared, provides women with a degree of independence and autonomy, including for professional purposes. Several studies have highlighted the link between mobile phone ownership and empowerment, and productivity growth. Existing data on the proportion of women owning a mobile phone suggest that less women than men own a mobile phone.
- Contact organization / person
- Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB) and Telecom Companies
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- An individual owns a mobile cellular phone if he/she has a mobile cellular phone device with at least one active SIM card for personal use. Mobile cellular phones supplied by employers that can be used for personal reasons (to make personal calls, access the Internet, etc.) are included. Individuals who have only active SIM card(s) and not a mobile phone device are excluded. Individuals who have a mobile phone for personal use that is not registered under his/her name are also included. An active SIM card is a SIM card that has been used in the last three months.
- Classification used
- A mobile (cellular) telephone refers to a portable telephone subscribing to a public mobile telephone service using cellular technology, which provides access to the PSTN. This includes analogue and digital cellular systems and technologies such as IMT-2000 (3G) and IMT-Advanced.
- Disaggregation
- For countries that collect this indicator through a national household survey, and if data allow breakdown and disaggregation, the indicator can be broken down not only by sex but also by region (geographic and/or urban/rural), by age group, by educational level, by labour force status, and by occupation.
- Key statistical concepts
- Countries can collect data on this indicator through national household surveys. This indicator is calculated by dividing the total number of in-scope individuals who own a mobile phone by the total number of in-scope individuals.
- Recommended uses
- This indicator highlights the importance of mobile phone ownership to track and to improve gender equality; monitoring will help design targeted policies to overcome the gender divide.
- Other comments
- This indicator is a newly developed ITU indicator that was approved by the World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium (WTIS) 2014. The indicator’s definition and methodology were developed under the coordination of ITU, through its Expert Groups and following an extensive consultation process with countries. Data for the proportion of individuals owning a mobile phone were first collected in 2015, through an annual questionnaire that ITU sends to national statistical offices (NSO).
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Target 2030
- 5.b. Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women
