 Well, there have been many thematic dialogues here at WISIS 2015 and one of them is on empowering women through technology and Claire Sipthop was part of that. Claire is with me now. Ms Sipthop, hello. Hello. Now, you're the program director of the Connected Women program. You've been doing some research and a big project on understanding mobile phone use and access in developing economies. What did you find? Yeah, so we looked at, we did a big study that looked at women's access to and use of phones in low-middle-income countries and this came, we did a study in 2010, so we looked at where things are now and I think there's some sort of key things that came out of it. So first of all, I think is that a lot of women, people don't have mobile phones despite the fact that there's been a larger increase in mobile phones. So we estimate that 1.7 billion females in low-middle-income countries don't have phones and there are fewer women than men who have phones. So in fact, there are 200 million fewer women than men that have phones. So it's quite a, there's a gender gap and there's a gender gap for a range of reasons. So, and then when we looked, that's just on the ownership issue, but then when we look at usage, there's actually a growing gap around usage. So when women do have phones, you don't see much of a difference in terms of making phone calls or receiving texts, but when you get into the more advanced features like mobile internet and mobile money, then you again see a growing gender gap. So if you look at a country like Kenya, for example, in our study, where the gender gap in ownership is relatively low, you still have big gaps around. We asked the question, did you, have you tried Facebook and sort of 62% of men said they did and 42% of women. So I think it's important to one, get, you know, make sure that women have equal access to phones that men and then also ensure that this usage gap is addressed because if women don't have, aren't using phones and they're not, you know, getting the same benefit. So it's a big number, 1.75 and the 200 million gap between the gender is also big, but you've obviously done quite a granular analysis. How did you get down to such detail? Oh, we did, yeah. So we, we have, we collected a lot of data. We, we did, we looked at 11 countries, we did 1,000 surveys in each country, we did a lot of focus groups. We have data from mobile operators and other surveys. We did, you know, a lot of focus group discussions and we also then looked at, you know, why, why is there this gap? What are the barriers? Yeah, why is the, why do we have these disparities? Yeah. So we asked people what, you know, what are the big barriers to accessing using phones and the top five are, so the top two were cost and network holding coverage. The third was security and harassment and then also operator agent trust and digital literacy and confidence. And then also underlying those is the fact that there, you know, social norms and the fact that their education and income, you know, women tend to have lower education, lower income than men. And so these sort of cultural and social factors also disproportionately affect women. So these barriers disproportionately affect women. Some of them seem, would seem easier to solve than others. Yeah. Cost is coming down, coverage is going up. Do you think this will make a significant impact or these other elements that I guess the social elements need to be addressed before you're going to see the changes that you're looking for? I think it's, I think it's that you need, it's, there's no kind of one solution. It has to be, it has to be all together. It has to be a concerted approach. And I, I think I think also the research shown, unless there's a concerted effort by people, this gender gap won't close. We looked at it 10, you know, five years ago and, you know, it doesn't close naturally on its own without, you know, targeted efforts in these different areas. It's, yeah. Okay. So again, your classic multi-stakeholder solution to a, to a very complex problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you said the trend was not, not good in terms of the difference between you and your last assessment now or? No, I think, so there's more women who have access than there was before, but there's still a gender gap. And I think the gender gap is also it, it differs depending on where you are. So, for example, we looked at, you know, India had a 30, women are 36% less likely than men to have a phone, which is, you know, where if you look at Kenya, it's 7%. So it does, it varies. And so in Kenya, it seems to have reduced things like Impessa have made an impact on reducing it. So I think there's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it can't say across the board it's decreased. There's certain areas where it remains very large and very acute. And I think this usage gap is going now. I mean, to get the real benefit from home, you have to be doing more than just making phone calls and sending and receiving texts. So this is the next issue we need to tackle. Well, Ms. Sipthop, we could probably talk a lot more about this out of time, unfortunately. Claire Sipthop, the Program Director for the Connected Women Program, I thank you for your time. Yeah, no problem. Thank you.