Literature on gender and technology use finds that
women and men differ significantly in their attitudes toward their
technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science
and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences
do not always translate into actual disparities. There has been
little work exploring gender differences with respect to Internet-use
ability, especially based on a diverse sample of adult users.
We use new data on Web-use skill to test empirically whether there
are differences in men’s and women’s abilities to
navigate online content. Findings suggest that men and women do
not differ greatly in their online abilities. However, we find
that women’s self-assessed skill is significantly lower
than that of men. We discuss the implications of these findings
for social inequality with respect to Internet use.
Eszter Hargittai, Assistant
Professor of Communication Studies, Faculty Fellow, Institute
for Policy Research, Northwestern University Steven Shafer, Graduate Student, Department of
Sociology, Princeton University
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