Abstract
In this paper, the digital inclusivity of women in Kazakhstan will be explicitly examined from the perspectives of existing gender gaps in Internet connectivity and regional variability in digital readiness from 2015 to 2024. The empirical study combines descriptive statistics, fixed-effects panel regression analysis, the construction of composite indices, and multivariate cluster analysis based on gender-disaggregated annual regional datasets for 21 units. The study also considers women's Internet and mobile telephony usage rates, along with a gender gap index constructed from differences in women’s Internet usage rates relative to men. For measuring multidimensionality in digital readiness, a composite index, ‘Women Digital Index’, is established. The findings show that Kazakhstan has almost overcome the quantitative aspect of the problem of women’s access to the Internet and mobile phones, as the level of women’s Internet and mobile phone usage across all regions of the country exceeds 90%. Moreover, there are still significant discrepancies between areas in the size and sign of the digital gender gap. The fixed-effect model estimates indicate a sharp positive trend in women’s Internet use, and the gender gap remains statistically insignificant. The clustering analysis has shown that there exist three different regional types of women’s digital Readiness: digital leaders, transitional regions, and saturated regions. The results confirm that high connectivity does not directly translate to gender equality.