News reports today citing one of the inventors of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as arguing that the Web “is not working for women and girls”. Tim Berners-Lee is a hero of all of us involved in study and use of the Internet, Web, and related information and communication technologies. Clearly, many women and girls might well ‘experience violence online, including sexual harassment and, threatening messages’. This is a serious problem, but it should not be unnoticed that the Internet and Web have been remarkably gender neutral with respect to access. 

In fact, women and girls access and use the Internet, Web and social media at about the same level as men and boys. There are some nations in which the use of the Internet and related ICTs is dramatically lower for women and girls, but in Britain, the US, and most high-income nations, digital divides are less related to gender than to such factors as income, education, and age.  This speaks volumes about the value of these media to women and girls, and this should not be lost in focusing on problematic and sometimes harmful aspects of access to content on the Web and related media. 

Below is one example of use of the Internet by gender in Britain in 2019, which shows that women are more likely to be next generation users (using three or more devices, one of which is mobile) and less likely to be a non-user:

The full report from which this drawn is available online here.