Women catching up with men on Internet usage

• Women catching up with men on Internet usage
• Web-surfing behavior is different
• Younger women on the net
• Men love sports and women love to communicate online

Women catching up with men on Internet usage

A NetValue survey found a 55-45 percentage split in the composition of male and female Internet surfers in Singapore, April 200. That represents about 462,000 males surfers and 380,000 women Internet users in Singapore.

The male Internet users spent slightly more time on the Internet than their female counterparts. In April, each male surfer spent an average of 9.4 hours on the Internet whereas the female Internet users were connected for about 9.0 hours. Comparatively, the male surfers connected to the Internet about twice a day and viewed about 12% more unique pages than the female Internet users during the referenced month.

Despite the difference, findings indicated that Singaporean women are spending more and more time on the Internet. “In fact, the women were connected for about 1.4 hours longer in April compared to January 2001. Men on the other hand showed an 8% decline in Internet usage time over the same period.” Said Dr. Jack Loo, Country Manager, NetValue (Singapore).

“The number of unique pages viewed by the male Internet users has remained somewhat stable since January 2001. The number of displays downloaded by the female Internet users, on the other hand, has increased by about 37%, from 294.1 to 402.7 unique pages from January to April 2001, respectively. Additionally, they have registered about 18% more sessions since January 2001.” Said Dr. Jack Loo.

“Women represent a lucrative market for advertisers and retailers online. Compared to the past, women now have higher spending power and are more IT savvy. The Internet is certainly an important media to reach out to this growing audience.” Said Miss Florence Oong, Research Director (South-East Asia), OMD.

Distribution of Internet users, April 2001
Click here to enlarge

Men and women Internet users utilized slightly different patterns of Web-surfing behavior as well as the usage of non-web protocols (like audio-video, chat, instant messaging, email, games, secured connections, etc) as indicated in the table below. In April, men surfed the web for about 12 days of the month whereas women were connected to the web for about 10.9 days during the same period. Men also spent more time gaming online. “In fact, 38.5 megabytes of files per male Internet user were downloaded via their games applications compared to 2.7 megabytes per female Internet user. It is obvious online gaming is more popular with the men than women.” Said Dr. Jack Loo.

Distribution of days connected for different protocols
Click here to enlarge

Women Internet users were relatively younger in age compared to their male counterparts. About 43.4% of the former were aged 24 years and below compared to about 34.8% for the male group. “The composition of the young Internet users declined since the beginning of the year. In January 2001, the young male and female segments constituted 36.2% and 46.5% of the Internet population.” Said Dr. Jack Loo.

The professionals, managers, executives and businessmen constituted the single largest category of the occupational grouping. Students also made up a significant proportion of the overall visitorship. “Interestingly, the proportion of the non-working female group has increased from 9.3% to 13.9% between January and April 2001, respectively. It is possible that the Internet is also catching up with the homemakers.” Said Dr. Jack Loo.

Distribution of Internet users by gender and age
Click here to enlarge

Distribution of Internet users by gender and occupation
Click here to enlarge

Men love sports and women love to communicate online

Men and women display different interests and e-lifestyles over the web. NetValue’s finding indicated that men has a high affinity for sports content while women prefers to communicate online. “You are 1.32 times more likely to find a male surfer at the sports site (e.g., scoocernet.com, wwf.com, espn.com) and about 1.28 times more likely to find a female surfer at sites offering E-cards (e.g., bluemountain.com, passthison.com).” Said Dr. Jack Loo.

Report provided by NetValue