Gauging the gender gap online

By Eileen O'Connor CNN Correspondent July 11, 2000 Web posted at: 12:07 p.m. EDT (1607 GMT) This news analysis was written for CNN Interactive.

In this story: Vive la difference Information, please, and make it snappy RELATED STORIES, SITES

(CNN) -- My husband is a wonderful guy, but he can drive me nuts.

When John watches television, he picks up the remote and clicks and clicks. I go right to the channel with a program I like to watch at the appointed time. I change channels only if I get bored, and then it is to go to something else tried and true.

It is the same with shopping. We need a new camera. John wants to look at every camera made by every manufacturer before we buy. I want to read a photography magazine, talk to a few friends about their cameras, then pick a model and buy it.

And when confronted with all those telephone voice prompts -- "press 'one' if you want your balance, 'two' if you want to lose your mind" -- I press "zero" immediately and usually am rewarded with a human being. My husband patiently listens to voice prompts. All of them.

I admit this tendency to cut to the chase has its drawbacks. I still do not have voice mail set up on my new cell phone. I hate reading the owner's manual to anything. My husband will not move without practically memorizing the things.

John sees new technology as a trip to the hardware store -- more gadgets to explore. I see technology as a means to an end: saving time. And it looks as if this domestic pattern of ours is playing out on the Internet.

It is still true that more men than women use the Web, but the gap is narrowing, According to February's Nielsen//NetRatings, it was 53 percent male to 47 percent female.

Yet differences appear to be growing in some ways men and women use the Internet. According to Nielsen, in February 1999 men spent one hour and 35 minutes more online per month than women did. By December that difference had increased to two hours, 12 minutes.

What are the men doing during that additional time? John, for one, is busy daydreaming, going to fly-fishing sites and printing information on ranches we could take the children to if we had a gazillion dollars.

When he helps one of our daughters do research for her science projects, he has her look through every site that comes up so they do not miss a "great one." I use a search engine and go site by site to find the answers until the homework is done. Her eyes, like mine, generally cross after the first 10 sites, while he happily clicks away even after she has gone to bed.

How men and women view technology explains a lot about how they use it, said Ekaterina Walsh, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., a technology-related research firm.

It is men's propensity to "play" with technology, Walsh said, that makes them view being online as entertainment. On a scale of "technology optimism," women are more "pessimistic" about it, she said, and view it as a tool, something that enables them to get something done. That helps explain why the percentage of women online in the United States, at 41 percent, is less than men, at 49 percent, according to Forrester.

"It doesn't mean women aren't going online," Walsh say, "but they need a little bit more convincing that it's safe, compelling, useful and reliable."

When online, women tend to be loyal in their usage patterns, according to Melissa Moss, president and CEO of Women's Consumer Network. That kind of loyalty is what business owners like Moss want to capitalize on.

"Men are likely to do more browsing in the Internet as a whole. But women, if they find a place where they are comfortable in a site, they will be loyal to that site," Moss said.

Women make an estimated 70 percent or more of all household purchases, according to some market analysts. Moss and others say it is that figure that is driving women to the Internet.

"Where the Internet is evolving for women is they use this to get things done, because you can do it at 2 o'clock in the morning," Moss said.

She is right about that in my house. I go online at all hours to send e-mails, grocery shop or get T-shirts for the kids for camp. I even recently ordered furniture online. The company e-mailed me great photos and sent me a fabric swatch by "snail mail." It included shipping as a promotional deal, so it made my purchase a better value than what I had seen in the Sunday papers.

E-business people like Moss know women like me want product information and do not have a lot of time to get it, and they are tailoring their sites accordingly.

"We do think women want more product information, so consequently what we do is show our research and in one place you can get the information," Moss said. She hopes that will drive customers back for more, creating loyalty.

The head of e-commerce at America Online, a giant of online service providers, believes women and men do the same things online that they do in "brick and mortar" stores. (AOL and Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.com, have agreed to merge their companies; the merger is awaiting government approval.)

"Men will stand around in Circuit City and listen to countless explanations of different speaker features," said AOL's Patrick Gates. "When women shop, it's down to business -- they know what they want, where to go, which stores carry their sizes and who to talk to."

AOL is aggregating categories of items into areas such as "Back to School," grouping children's clothes, shoes and even notebooks to engage the busy woman shopper.

"Women are juggling lots on the schedule," Gates said. "They are saying, 'Give me the tools that get it done and let's get on with it.'"

AOL also groups high-tech toys and lets them fiddle with the technology online. The target: daydreaming men. "Men want to play," Gates said.

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Still, Walsh of Forrester Research thinks it is best not to make too much of gender differences, noting that the main reason for going online given by men and women in her company's surveys is the same: communication.

"There is no difference between men and women in sending and receiving e-mail, and no difference in their use of online chats," Walsh said.

Maybe she is right, I do not know. Let me e-mail my husband and get back to you. Do not wait, though. He is probably fly-fishing online.

CNN.com: Technology

Forrester Research
Live Products
Nielsen//NetRatings
Shop@AOL.COM
Women's Consumer Network

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