http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/update/story.jsp?story=78219Women 'spending more time than men' on the Net
By Charles Arthur Technology Editor
15 June 2001
THE INDEPENDENT
British women are for the first time spending more time online than men, a
survey released yesterday suggests.
Of 13.9 million people who logged on from home during May, 58 per cent, or 8
million, were men and 42 per cent, or 5.9 million, were women, said
NetValue, an internet research company.
However, the women racked up more minutes online a total of 462 minutes a
month (an average of 15 minutes a day) against the men's 414 minutes (an
average of 13 minutes 20 seconds a day).
"Women were viewing more pages than the men," said Jannie Cahill, marketing
manager for NetValue UK. "I think it indicates that they are becoming more
confident about using the internet. Also, sites aimed at women are making a
showing on the Net."
The NetValue data showed that women looked on average at 412 unique pages,
while men looked at 347. That may indicate that men, who generally have been
on the Net longer than women, have become creatures of habit in the sites
they visit, and unwilling to branch out to new ones.
But the success of the women's sites does not make them exclusively
attractive to females: one-third of all visitors to "women's websites" such
as handbag.com, the most visited women's site, were men.
Though the figures for time spent online might seem encouraging, they show
little progress from a year ago, and suggest that home use is still held
back by the perceived cost of using the Net.
Yet Oftel, the telecoms regulator, released a separate study yesterday
suggesting that internet access is cheaper in Britain than in California
the original home of logging on.
A six-country survey found that British internet users paid an average of
£18 a month for unlimited access, £1 less than in California and £21 less
than in Germany.
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