What Do the Pew Data Tell Us?
More than 9 million women have gone online for the first time during the past 6 months, and this surge has led to gender parity in the internet population. It has also reshaped America's social landscape because women have used e-mail to enrich their important relationships and enlarge their networks. The internet has the opposite of an isolating effect on these users. Women report that e-mail has helped them to improve connections to their relatives and friends. More women than men say that they are attached to e-mail and pleased with how it helps them.
Access
Examining several Pew reports that touch on the demographics of gender and the gendered use of the internet, we might conclude that gender parity has been reached.1 Data reinforce the view that the internet has become domesticated; it is now woven into the daily lives of Americans. For many women, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become a routine part of the mundane.
Tracking Online Life (2000) revealed that gender parity had been reached; women make up half of internet users, with older women getting online at a slightly higher rate than other users (Wired Seniors, 2001). Women are characterized as "Instant Acolytes" because they are the fastest growing group of people getting online; three of five women (58%) were Instant Acolytes in 2000, compared with 50% of the entire internet population (New Internet Users, 2000). Instant Acolytes were further characterized as "more female, less wealthy, and less educated than the overall internet population" in March 2000. In particular, the percentage of women ages 18 to 24 years who became Instant Acolytes grew from 44% in 1998 to 59% in 2000. Women between 30 and 45 years of age were 61% of internet Acolytes in 2000, compared with 57% in 1998. Furthermore, more women today are "Net Joiners" (i.e., people who join various online groups after being on the internet for a while), particularly those who are younger, are non-white, have a lower household income and less education, and are relatively new to the internet.
Gender differences in access are revealed, however, when ethnicity is taken into account. Among African Americans, women are more likely to be online than are men (56% vs. 44%), with women comprising 61% of internet newcomers. African Americans online tend to have lower incomes and lower educational levels than their white counterparts, and 56% of African American users are under 34 years of age, compared with 40% of white users.
Among Asian Americans, more men are online than are women (58% vs. 42%), with Asian Americans who speak English the largest and most experienced group of people online (Asian Americans and the Internet, 2001). Asian Americans are the most experienced racial and ethnic group on the internet, with more veteran users (55% of them came online more than 3 years ago). Of those, 40% of Asian American women are veterans, with nearly three quarters of them having 2 or more years of experience; this is contrasted with white women (29%), African American women (23%), and Hispanic women (25%). New Asian American women users (i.e., those who have been on the internet less than 6 months) comprise less than 10%; this is contrasted with white women (15%), African American women (23%), and Hispanic women (20%).