comScore, a provider of digital marketing intelligence, recently published their survey findings on women’s Internet browsing behaviour. While confirming certain assumptions (see: women and shopping), the survey also raises some interesting findings (women prefer Bing! who knew?), and highlights other factors, such as overall Internet access, that affect how people manage their time on the Internet.
“Women are actually more engaged than men on the Internet, and they chart their own course. You just have to know where to look.”
Access, Access, Access
Gender differences become very obvious when one looks at early adoption of technology—the case is especially clear with the use of mobile services. In Europe and the United States, the ratio of male smartphone owners to female is about 3:2, with the difference being even greater in other parts of the world. The more limited access to smartphones means that women are therefore not using mobile applications as much as men.
However, while men may still dominate the technological frontier, women are now heavy users of the Internet.
Looking at the global Internet population (note: comScore’s survey excludes Africa), access to the Internet in general is more evenly divided between the genders. Time spent online is also fairly similar, with women clocking an average of 24.8 hours per week to men’s 22.9 hours. However, the percentage of women online varies by region, with access being poorer in the Asia Pacific (42.4%). This implies that as Asia becomes more affluent, ratios will improve to Europe and North America’s levels.
Even so, the number of women online in Asia already outnumbers those online in North America by more than two to one. This large regional market is still growing rapidly.
What Do Women Like to Do Online?
More Online Minutes Spent On Education, Social Networking, Online Retail
Some of the areas where women spend more online minutes compared to men are education, social networking and online retail (though not online auctions). With social networking, one can see women being active in related services as well – photo-sharing, instant messaging, gaming and video-viewing are all very popular.
This is not to say that women are to be found exclusively in what may be considered as stereotypically female domains—while they do spend less time on areas such as banking or business services and on multimedia applications, the differences are not large.
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