Worldwide, 70 per cent of men are using the Internet, compared with 65 per cent of women. This means that globally, there are 244 million more men than women using the Internet in 2023.
Parity is achieved when the gender parity score, defined as the share of women using the Internet divided by the share of men using the Internet, is between 0.98 and 1.02. The world population has been inching gently towards parity, with the score increasing from 0.90 in 2019 to 0.92 in 2023.
The gender parity score, however, provides only a partial picture of the gender divide, because it represents the ratio of two percentages. For example, while women account for roughly half of the population, they account for a disproportionate – and increasing – share of the global offline population: women now outnumber male non-Internet users by 17 per cent, up from 11 per cent in 2019.
Generally, the regions with the highest Internet use also have the highest gender parity scores. In the Americas, the CIS, and Europe, gender parity has been achieved or almost achieved. The Asia-Pacific score is now above the 0.9 mark. Progression of this score has been the strongest in the Arab States region, where the score improved from 0.79 in 2019, to 0.87 in 2023. The Africa region continues to lag other regions by a sizeable margin despite some improvement, where roughly four in ten men and three in ten women use the Internet.
Least developed countries continue to exhibit low levels of Internet use and to generate low gender parity scores despite having made noticeable progress in recent years in both usage and gender parity. Landlocked developing countries have shown only limited progress towards gender parity since 2019.
Gender parity scores and Internet penetration rates tend to be correlated. Small island developing States, where two thirds of the population use the Internet, are an exception. Although SIDS are 25 percentage points below the most connected country groups, they are close to gender parity (0.97). In 2019, the share of women using the Internet was higher than that of men (score of 1.02).