Gender differentials in readiness and use of mHealth services in a rural area of Bangladesh

Traditional gender roles result in women lagging behind men in the use of modern technologies, especially in developing countries. Although there is rapid uptake of mobile phone use in Bangladesh, investigation of gender differences in the ownership, access and use of mobile phones in general and mH...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC health services research 2017-08, Vol.17 (1), p.573-573, Article 573
Main Authors: Khatun, Fatema, Heywood, Anita E, Hanifi, Syed Manzoor Ahmed, Rahman, M Shafiqur, Ray, Pradeep K, Liaw, Siaw-Teng, Bhuiya, Abbas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Analysis
Bangladesh
Cell Phone - statistics & numerical data
Cell Phone - utilization
Cellular telephones
Developing countries
Empowerment
Female
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Health services
Health Services Accessibility
Households
Humans
Husbands
Logistic Models
Male
Middle Aged
Sex Factors
Sex roles
Social Class
Socioeconomic factors
Surveys and Questionnaires
Telemedicine
Telemedicine - utilization
Wireless telephones
Young Adult
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Summary:Traditional gender roles result in women lagging behind men in the use of modern technologies, especially in developing countries. Although there is rapid uptake of mobile phone use in Bangladesh, investigation of gender differences in the ownership, access and use of mobile phones in general and mHealth in particular has been limited. This paper presents gender differentials in the ownership of mobile phones and knowledge of available mHealth services in a rural area of Bangladesh. We interviewed 4915 randomly selected respondents aged 18 years and above. Associations between gender and knowledge of available mHealth services, use of existing mHealth services and intentions to use mHealth services in the future were examined by multivariate logistic regression analysis, controlling for the effect of categorised covariates. Of the 4915 respondents to the survey, 61.8% of men (1213/1964) and 34.4% of women (1015/2951) owned a mobile phone. For men, mobile phone ownership was highest among those aged 18-29 years (n = 663, 76.3%), and for women among those aged 30-39 years (n = 825, 44.7%). A higher proportion of men owned phones compared to women, irrespective of socioeconomic status (SES) as indicated by asset index (p 
ISSN:1472-6963
1472-6963
DOI:10.1186/s12913-017-2523-6