Empirical verification of the link between the digital divide and women's economic participation in Africa

This article examines the link between the digital divide and women's economic participation. We use a cross-sectional model based on a panel of 45 African countries. Our results show that the digital divide (cell phone, bandwidth and Internet) worsens women's economic participation. The negative influence of the digital divide on women's economic participation tends to be amplified in countries with low democracy and in the industrial sector. Our results remain stable when we add cultural variables and when we use the alternative measure of the digital divide. However, after using the quantile regression approach, we find that these influences vary at different intervals along the distribution of women's economic participation.