Women on the Web: How Women Shaping the Internet

A new report by comScore titled  “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” shows more women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.

Frankly, I am not surprised, women do pretty much the same things whatever communication tools you give them, whether it’s phone, TV, or the internet, they use it to talk to each other, look for deals, follow celebrity gossips etc.

comScore analyzed the Internet behaviors of women everywhere and found that while women make up a little less than half of the global online population (46%), their online behaviors drastically distinguish them from male Internet users.

The report, comScore concludes that women are the digital mainstream, a group of savvy Internet explorers who are more engaged than their male counterparts, and are the primary drivers of online and group buying.

Women and Retail

Men and women visit retail sites in practically equal amounts, but women spend 20% more time on those sites. That time equates to more money spent in most retail categories, as women buy more frequently than men do.

Women spend significantly more money on apparel and accessories, with their dollars accounting for 71% of all dollars spent in that category in the U.S. for February. They also spend more on books and music, toys, and even video games and consoles.

comScore concludes that women are also driving growth on group-buying sites. They compromise a majority of the U.S. audiences on both Groupon (62%) and LivingSocial

Women and Social Media

On average, women spend more time online per month, 24.8 hours compared to 22.9 hours for men. But, when it comes to the social web, there’s an even bigger rift between the sexes.

“Nearly 56 percent of adult women say they use the Internet to stay in touch with people, compared to 46 percent of adult men,” according to the report. comScore pinpoints higher activity levels in social categories such as social networking, instant messenger and e-mail.

Those behaviors equate to women spending an average of 16.3% of their online time per month on social networks, a percentage that continues to rise month-to-month. Men spend just 11.7% of their time on the same activities.

In terms of country breakdowns, 9 out of 10 North American women visit social networking sites, making them the group with the highest reach. Latin American and European women are practically equals in this category, with 83.6% and 83.4% social networking participation respectively.

Women and Twitter

comScore found that Twitter’s reach is only marginally higher among women than among men. Women also outpace men in the adoption of Tiwtter, but only marginally as well.

The slight differences between the sexes doesn’t accurately highlight the actual disparity in how the two sexes use the microblogging platform.