Guwahati: The Reliance Jio and GSMA has rolled out their Digital Skills Program, nationally, it is a joint initiative under the broader GSMA Connected Women Commitment.

The program aims to provide need-based training to rural women and individuals from marginalized low-income groups to help them make meaningful use of digital access.

As per the GSMA’s Mobile Gender Gap Report 2022, women in India are 41% less likely than men to use mobile internet. A total of 330 million women in India still do not use mobile internet, compared to 248 million men. Lack of literacy and digital skills is one of the top reported barriers to mobile internet use.

The GSMA’s Connected Women programme works with mobile operators and their partners to address the barriers to women accessing and using mobile internet and mobile money services. Connected Women aims to reduce the gender gap in mobile internet and mobile money services and unlock significant commercial opportunities for the mobile industry and socio-economic benefits for women. The Connected Women programme is currently funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and is supported by the GSMA and its members. The digital skills training toolkits have been funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK, Swedish or Norwegian governments’ official policies, statement said.

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