Bridging Digital Gaps: A Technological Roadmap to Inclusive Women’s Empowerment in Chennai City

Digital technologies are widely promoted as instruments of inclusive growth; however, gendered disparities in access, skills and agency persist within rapidly urbanising Indian contexts. This study examines women’s digital participation in Chennai city, positioned as an analytic urban case to explore how infrastructural conditions, sociocultural norms and policy environments interact to shape digital empowerment. Employing a mixed-methods design, the research integrates nationally representative data sets National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) with primary survey data ( n = 250), semi-structured interviews ( n = 40), focus group discussions and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based infrastructure mapping across four socio-economically diverse zones. Findings reveal significant intra-urban variation in digital access, affordability and skill acquisition, alongside persistent sociocultural constraints that mediate women’s engagement with digital platforms. Regression analysis indicates statistically significant associations between digital competencies and economic participation, though causality cannot be inferred. Intersectional patterns demonstrate that education and socio-economic positioning substantially influence digital inclusion outcomes, even within high-connectivity urban settings. The analysis is further grounded in three sector-specific case studies illustrating how digital tools translate into measurable business and financial outcomes. Building on these empirical insights, the study advances a contextualised, policy-sensitive framework for urban digital empowerment and proposes a phased, multi-stakeholder roadmap aligned with India’s 2047 development vision. The findings offer analytically transferable insights for designing gender-responsive digital inclusion strategies in comparable metropolitan environments.