Unequal access in a digital age: women's digital exclusion and socioeconomic inequalities in Vietnam
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the skills to use them are essential for inclusive development and digital participation. As Vietnam accelerates its digital transformation, ensuring that women are not left behind is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). This study investigates the extent and socioeconomic patterning of digital exclusion among women in Vietnam. Methods: We utilized nationally representative data from the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), which covered 10,770 women aged 15-49. Digital exclusion was defined in terms of (1) no ICT access (no use of computer, internet, or mobile phone in the past 3 months) and (2) no ICT skills (unable to perform any of nine standard digital tasks). Results: Results show that 4.28% of women lacked digital access and 72.85% lacked digital skills. Inequalities were stark: access was lowest among ethnic minorities (19.55%) and the poorest quintile (17.10%), compared to 1.980.31% in the majority and richest groups. The digital skills gap was even wider, with 95.51% of the poorest women lacking ICT skills vs. 41.23% of the richest. Multivariable logistic regressions confirmed that ethnicity, wealth, rural residence, and older age were key predictors of exclusion. Conclusion: These findings underscore the urgent need for inclusive digital policies that extend beyond infrastructure to address gendered and socioeconomic barriers to digital literacy. Without targeted efforts, digital rollouts may widen existing inequalities and undermine SDG progress.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".