Globally, 70 per cent of men are using the Internet, compared with 65 per cent of women. This means there are 189 million more men than women using the Internet in 2024. This difference has been decreasing since 2021, when it stood at 277 million.
Gender parity is deemed to be achieved when the gender parity score, defined as the female percentage divided by the male percentage, is between 0.98 and 1.02. Like overall Internet use, gender parity is closely correlated with the level of development.
In recent years, the world has been moving gradually towards gender parity, with the gender parity score increasing from 0.91 in 2019 to 0.94 in 2024. The improvement is also reflected at the level of regions and country groups, with a notable exception: in the group of LDCs, gender parity has actually decreased, from 0.74 in 2019 to 0.70 in 2024.
In the SIDS group, the gender parity score also decreased slightly: from a figure slightly above one, indicating that more women than men were using the Internet, it dropped to exactly one in 2024, indicating perfect gender parity. The SIDS are also a notable, positive exception to the strong correlation between gender parity and overall Internet use: they have achieved gender parity even though slightly less than two-thirds of the population use the Internet.
Among the ITU regions, gender parity has been achieved in the Americas, Europe and the CIS region. In the Asia-Pacific region, progress is fast, as the score improved from 0.89 in 2019 to 0.95 in 2024. In the Arab States, on the other hand, the gender parity score has not improved, remaining at 0.86 during the same period. Finally, there is progress in Africa, but the region is still far behind the other regions.