Poor women in cities are using the internet just as much as more affluent women and men, but are less likely to use it to increase their income or engage with politics online, a study has found.
The report from last 2015 says that poor urban women are held back by a lack of education and language skills when they use the web. The study found that 97 per cent of women who use the internet do so through social media, especially Facebook. But, for example, just 20 per cent said they had used the internet to access information on sexual health and contraception. The researchers also found that female internet users in developing co untries are 25 per cent less likely than men to search for jobs online, and 50 per cent less likely to express controversial views in online discussions.
“Using the internet only for Facebook is passive use: women are not actively engaging using the web for empowerment, knowledge, information and rights,” says Ingrid Brudvig, the women’s rights coordinator for the World Wide Web Foundation and an author of the report. “This could mean a lack of available relevant content that is user-friendly, low levels of literacy among users and a lack of language diversity represented online.”