Visual Sociology of Digital Gender Gap

Led by sociologist, Prof Ridhi Kashyap, the Digital Gender Gaps project provides a free online data dashboard to track gender inequity in internet and mobile phone use.

Free online data sources are particularly helpful to applied sociologists working in policy or community service sectors, as we often lack access to deidentified data sources. This is also a useful example of how visual sociology can assist analysis and problem-solving.

A first of its kind, this resource allows users to identify data at the national and subnational levels, and to display data from specific date ranges, from 2015 to 2025. Data can also be downloaded for personal and professional use.

The project provides regular updates and monthly estimates of internet and mobile adoption by gender.

At a glance, the map shows the highest digital gender equity in North America, Guyana, parts of Northern, Southern and Western Europe, as well as Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates Libya, Oman, Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. However, across the world, women do not have 100% digital gender parity.

The data show that, ‘gender gaps in internet use and mobile ownership are especially large in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.’ Additionally:

• ‘women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are 22% less likely to use the internet and 14% less likely to own a mobile phone’
• Subnational estimates ‘show large gender inequalities in internet and mobile ownership within LMICs such as India and Nigeria’
• ‘In Nigeria, more than 70% of women use the internet in the southern, capital city of Lagos, but fewer than 20% use the internet in northern areas such as Kebbi. While more than 75% of women use the internet in India’s capital New Delhi, only around 35% do in the northern state of Bihar’

The researchers argue that digital gender gap data are important because women with higher internet and mobile phone access are more empowered about their health and household decision-making. Digital access can also help women share information on sexual and reproductive health, as well as increasing women’s economic opportunities and professional networking.

See the dashboard: https://digitalgendergaps.org/dashboard/