FW: New Pew Report on Gender & the Internet

The Pew Internet Project has recently released a new report on how men
and women use the Internet. You can find the full report at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/171/report_display.asp

Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life

Washington - A wide-ranging look at the way American women and men use
the internet shows that men continue to pursue many internet activities
more intensively than women, and that men are still first out of the
blocks in trying the latest technologies. At the same time, there are
trends showing that women are catching up in overall use and are framing
their online experience with a greater emphasis on deepening connections
with people.
A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows how
men's and women's use of the internet has changed over time. Some
highlights:

The percentage of women using the internet still lags slightly behind
the percentage of men. Women under 30 and black women outpace their male
peers. However, older women trail dramatically behind older men.

*68% of men are internet users, compared with 66% of women. Because they
make up more of the population, the total number of women online is now
slightly larger than the number of men.
*86% of women ages 18-29 are online, compared with 80% of men that age.
*34% of men age 65 and older are online, compared with 21% of women that
age.
*60% of black women are online, compared with 50% of black men.

"If there is an overall pattern of differences here, it is that men
value the internet for the breadth of experiences it offers, and women
value it for the human connections," said Deborah Fallows, Senior
Research Fellow at the Pew Internet Project, who authored the new
report, "How Women and Men Use the Internet."

That said, men and women are more similar than different in their online
lives, starting with their common appreciation of the internet's
strongest suit: efficiency. Both men and women approach with gusto
online transactions that simplify their lives by saving time on such
mundane tasks as buying tickets or paying bills. Men and women also
value the internet for a second strength, as a gateway to limitless
vaults of information. Men reach farther and wider for topics, from
getting financial information to political news. Along the way, they
work search engines more aggressively, using engines more often and with
more confidence than women. Women are more likely to see the vast array
of online information as a "glut" and to penetrate deeper into areas
where they have the greatest interest, including health and religion.
Women tend to treat information gathering online as a more textured and
interactive process - one that includes gathering and exchanging
information through support groups and personal email exchanges.

"This moment in internet history will be gone in a blink," said Fallows.
"We may soon look back on it as a charming, even quaint moment, when men
reached for the farthest corners of the internet, trying and
experimenting with whatever came along, and when women held the internet
closer and tried to keep it a bit more under control."