Women Now Outnumber Men Online

miller60 writes "There are now more American women than men using the Internet, according to a new study from the Pew Center on the Internet and American Life on gender and use of the Net. While a slightly larger percentage of men than women are online (68 percent vs 66 percent), the larger population of American women tips the balance. Other findings: younger women and black women outpace their male peers by larger margins than the wider population."

Comments

But they use the net differently

[shreevatsa]

What the summary doesn't point out is that women and men seem to view the internet differently.

the research found that men value the net for the freedom it gives them to try new ways of doing things. By contrast women like the opportunities the net gives them to make and maintain human connections.

(Look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4555370.stm. )

However, I have my own doubts about correct this research is --

The Pew report also found that men are more likely to use the net to get at all kinds of information about sports results, weather, news, job offers and consumer ratings for goods and services. Men were also more likely to use the net for recreation and to listen to music, gather information for hobbies and take part in online fantasy sports leagues.

All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed ;)

Re:But they use the net differently

[argStyopa]

All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed ;)
Your last comment was meant, I suppose, to be tongue in cheek. I don't think it's wrong, however. Anyone who has 'existed' online since the early days of the WWW *knows* that pr0n has not only been endemic to the 'net experience' but has in fact driven many of its key technologies - audio, then video streaming for example.

I understand that many people are squeamish about the subject, but if we're making a serious survey of net use, you're right - to entirely OMIT pr0n as a subject leaves an, er, gaping hole in the data.

It would be practically like a survey of automobile use without referring to commuting.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Guus.der.Kinderen]

Even 0.0023% of the population can give a surveyor an accurate result. It all depends on the way the population was sampled. Sampling can be a science in itself though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

always with the average, feh

[Quadraginta]

Polls comparing the average behaviour of men and women are boring and useless. Frankly, who gives a damn what the differences between the average man and average woman is? Someone who is average, I guess...

What a pity someone doesn't look at the differences in the distribution of how men and women use the net. Here's my guess: the distibution of men who use the net is probably much wider than the distribution of women, that is, there are probably more male the female total power net geeks, and also more men than women who never use the net at all.

Re:but what are they doing?

[AtomicBomb]

they creating new Googles? big difference, I hope they are creating new Googles, but most likely the number of women doing that is still small. It is not such an advance for female-kind to do email and chatting online!

Who cares? Internet is just a media. Think about it as a telephone. People enjoy using it to chat with friend will continue to do so when using Internet. Many talk on the phone exclusively on business matter on the other hand. Some design to hack around (remember what's the origin of 2600?) the telephone network. We can find an analogue between the former phone commnunity to the Internet one (IM addicts/.com startup/hackers). Nothing wrong/ primitive/ need to be fixed in terms of user activity profile. It is just a reflection of the society.

Your trouble is with editors at news sources

[ianscot]

It's interesting to scan down the list of titles different sources gave this same basic story. They all basically parrot back the headline the report used, but lots don't even get that right.

While several of the stories (like this one on /.) are saying a slightly higher percentage of women now use the 'net, the first bullet point on The Pew site says "The percentage of women using the internet still lags slightly behind the percentage of men." Later in their summary Pew gives the bland tag news sources probably reacted to: "In most categories of internet activity, more men than women are participants, but women are catching up. "

The report itself is far more wide-ranging, and most of its interesting content gets left out of the usual suspects. I mean, parents are more likely to be online than nonparents -- 80% to 60%, which is a BIG difference. And so on. Even dramatic stuff gets discarded in favor of a horse-race-between-the-sexes thing, here. And I'll bet Pew phrased their own headline as a gender gap thing as a way of getting the attention of news sources, too -- the problem perpetuates itself.

Why is it that general news sources touch on only one or two aspects of something like this, but the original source's press release is much richer in the same space? It's like the whole "force a dialectic on the story even if there isn't one" thing is causing reporters to discard tons of primary information to sell a faked-up conflict that isn't there. (The more tabloid a source is, the worse it gets, too. Fox makes a hell of a living pimping every story up like this.)

In a reporting world like that, reporters aren't being asked to turn stories on their heads. They're just regurgitating press releases and reinforcing stereotypes.

We needed a study to prove this?

[HikingStick]

I don't intend this as a flame, but give me a break. In nearly every area of life women differ from men. This is not a bad thing (I can't imagine being married to someone like me!), but it flies in the face of a segment of society that wants to believe that all gender differences are learned behavior and have no basis in genetics (nurture over nature).

Anyone who has both sons and daughters knows they are different, no matter how hard you try to androgenize them.

We need to get over ourselves and realize that difference does not equate to inferiority.