Our users constantly ask us to collate more Internet measurement data on Pulse. One particular metric for which we’ve previously received many requests was Internet use by gender.
Measuring demographic Internet usage has become essential for governments to plan for and carry out the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 5, which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Read: Why Measuring Internet Gender Equality Matters
Luckily, the ITU collects and makes this data open to the public, so we recently added it, along with several other popular requested metrics, to the Pulse Country Reports and the Pulse API.
In light of International Women’s Day, we wanted to highlight this metric, particularly in the countries with the widest gender gap. In the chart below, you can see the top 10 countries with the largest proportion of male Internet users compared to female Internet users (below) and the top 10 countries with the largest proportion of female Internet users compared to male Internet users (top).
It’s interesting to note that the country with the most significant difference is Maldives, where female Internet users (95.5%) way outnumber male Internet users (76.4%).
Overall, female Internet users outnumber male Internet users in 36 countries, while male Internet users outnumber female Internet users in 89 countries. There is no difference in Bahrain, Iceland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Data Limitations
While we would like to add all metrics that we receive requests for, we need to be mindful of our focus on the availability, evolution, and resilience of the Internet.
We are also limited by the type of data we can collect. Namely, it needs to be:
- Open-sourced
- Cover at least 90 countries
- Continually refreshed
The latter point is something that the Internet Society is advocating for more countries to contribute to. Without up-to-date data, we cannot show the impact of policies and development initiatives that seek to improve Internet equality and connect the remaining 2.6 billion people who are unconnected.
Photo by Roopa Gogineni / Panos Pictures.