Gendered Disadvantage in Later Life: Social Support, Digital Literacy, and Quality of Life among Older People in Haryana

Description

Ankit Prakash¹, Anisha Juneja², Gaurav³, and Supriya⁴ (Department of Psychology, Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India^1,2
ICSSR Minor Research Project, Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India^3,4)

Gender is a key axis of inequality in older people’s quality of life in India, but the mechanisms through which it operates with other social and technological factors are poorly understood, especially in patriarchal North India. Cross-sectional data were gathered from N = 280 elderly participants (≥60 years) across ten districts of Haryana using the GDS-15 (Yesavage & Sheikh, 1986), MSPSS (Zimet et al., 1988), self-designed Digital Literacy Assessment Checklist (DLAC), and WHOQOL-OLD (Power et al., 2005). Gender comparisons used t-tests, and gender moderation was assessed using Hayes’ (2022) PROCESS Macro (Model 1; 5,000 bootstrap resamples). Cultural explanations came from 20 in-depth interviews and two focus groups (N = 31). Female participants had higher depressive symptoms (M = 4.97 vs. 3.75, d = 0.40), lower digital literacy (M = 7.24 vs. 10.97, d = 0.81), and lower quality of life (M = 77.19 vs. 85.68, d = 0.72) than males (all p < .01). Gender moderated the social support-quality of life correlation (B = 1.994, p = .044; ΔR² = .004): social support was modestly more strongly correlated with quality of life for women (B = 8.612) than men (B = 6.618). These trends reflected gendered emotional expressivity, marginalization due to widowhood, exclusion from technology due to patriarchy at home, and moral stigma of mental illness. Elderly women of Haryana thus face combined structural disadvantage in depression, technology access, and quality of life, and their social support is more fragile due to widowhood and digital exclusion.