Women Closing the Internet Access Gender Gap in Ghana

Almost as many women as men use the internet in Ghana, according to a new survey from the World Wide Web Foundation. The study finds men are only 6% more likely to be online than women.

This is in sharp contrast to the large gender gap found globally where men are 21% more likely to be online than women, rising to 52% in the world’s least developed countries. In Uganda, which also featured in the study, men were 43% more likely to be online than women.

The survey shows that Ghana has made significant progress towards closing the gender gap in internet access, with 29% of women now online, up from fewer than 20% in 2016, according to a previous report from the Web Foundation and the Media Foundation for West Africa.

However, the report warns that women using the internet in Ghana still experience a lower quality of connection to men, preventing them from fully benefiting from digital technology. Ghana has a 14% gender gap in ‘meaningful connectivity’, a measure based on whether users have fast speeds, enough data, a suitable device and regular access to the internet.

Women surveyed were around half as likely as men to say they had internet speeds sufficient to meet their online needs. And, on average, they had smaller data bundles, with 75% of women limited to 1GB data or less per month, compared with just 58% of men.

Slow speeds and limited data severely constrain how people use the internet, particularly for high-bandwidth applications needed to work and learn from home which, during the COVID-19 crisis, have become more important than ever.

“Getting basic internet access is just the first step. To participate in digital society you need an affordable quality connection, you need the digital skills to use the internet and you need to feel safe online,” says Chenai Chair, Web Foundation Research Manager for Gender and Digital Rights.

“While Ghana has seen important progress, it is still the case that women here – and around the world – face a multitude of barriers preventing them from realising the internet’s full benefits”.

A lack of digital skills presents a significant barrier to online participation. 43% of women living in urban areas who are not online said they do not use the internet because they do not know-how, compared with just 27% of men in urban areas.

The report warns that exclusion of women from digital society is a threat to progress on gender equality and denies women opportunities to improve their lives: “The internet is one of the most empowering technologies the world has ever seen, but unless women are equally able to benefit from it, the gender divide risks driving further inequality.”