A complex story of Indian women in Education and Digital Access

The NFHS is a key data source for India's monitoring of SDG indicators and several national programmes. Women’s internet use saw its largest increase in Andhra Pradesh, from 21% to 63.6%. The gap between women and men in access to and use of digital technologies; the NFHS-6 doubling of women's internet use signals significant narrowing in India. The internet use among women has nearly doubled even now and it denoted to pointing a sharp narrowing of the digital gender gap. The big concern of the study is 20.1% of women aged between 20–24 years were married before the legal age of 18. The low property ownership among women, continued early marriage, and disproportionate burden of family planning. The real progress on gender equality of SDG, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, and women-focused schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, PM-JAY, etc are being witnessed that the women being empowered.   

1.                National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6), 2023-24, IIPS, Mumbai. 2.                Bindu Shajan Perappadan, Significant gains in women education, digital access, and economic agency but social constraints persist, NFHS-6 finds, The Hindu, May 30,2026. 3.                Susan Ferguson,Shombi Sharp, The digital frontier of inequality, The Hindu, March 7, 2025. 4.                Digital technology is key to improve literacy learning for girls and women, UNESCO, March 8, 2023.