New data emerging from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) shows that, while half the world’s population – at 4.1-billion – is now online, more than half of the female population is not.

“Women are still trailing men in benefiting from the transformational power of digital technologies,” the ITU’s ‘Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2019’ report notes.

The first edition in the new Measuring Digital Development series estimates that 52% of the female population is still not using the Internet, compared with the 42% of males who are not online.

While the digital gender gap has been shrinking in the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe, it is widening in Africa, the Arab States and the Asia-Pacific region.

“More men than women use the Internet in every region of the world except the Americas, which has near-parity,” ITU secretary general Houlin Zhao says, noting that the gap is widest in developing countries, particularly least developed countries.

"ITU's Measuring Digital Development reports are a powerful tool to better understand connectivity issues, including the growing digital gender divide, at a time when over half of the world's population is using the Internet,” Zhao continues.

“ITU data confirms a correlation between the mobile phone ownership gender gap and the Internet gender gap – countries where the mobile phone ownership gender gap is large also have a high number of women not using the Internet.”

He points to the fact that, of the 85 countries providing data on mobile phone ownership, 61 have a higher proportion of men with mobile phones than women.

“Of the 24 remaining countries where there is gender parity in mobile phone ownership, or where more women have mobile phones than men, Chile has the highest digital gender gap in favour of women at 12%,” he says.

With 96% of the world population now living within reach of a mobile cellular signal and this being the most-often used means of accessing the Internet, addressing the issue of women's mobile phone ownership could help reduce the Internet gender divide.