Gender and Educational Digital Chasms in Computer and Internet Access and Use over Time: 1983-2000

Using several nationally representative surveys of American adults, this study tracks gender, education and computer access and use from 1983 to 2000, and Internet access and use from 1995 to 2000. Access to computers and the Internet rose dramatically over this time among both sexes and all educational groups. Increases in home computer ownership were particularly marked among the high-school educated. Otherwise, gender and educational gaps in IT access and use remained roughly stable. Unmarried women least often owned a home computer or had online access. Lesseducated women and better -educated men used work computers significantly more often. College-educated men were most likely to have work Web access or email, and men or the well-educated were more likely to use home email or subscribe to a home network service. Education or gender gaps in online time rose from 1995 to 2000, with men or very well-educated individuals increasing their online hours the most. However, women with graduate degree did achieve gender parity in many areas of IT access or use by 2000. Results are interpreted in part as stemming from gender and educational occupation differences. Implications for policy makers and educators are discussed. ______________________ Susan Carol Losh is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University, Program Leader of the Learning and Cognition Program, and the American Statistical Association-NSF/SRS Research Fellow for 20032004. slosh@garnet.acns. fsu.edu. This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant #0139458 and Grant #03-212 (SRS-0086139) supported by the Association for Institutional Research, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Science Foundation (administered by the Association for Institutional Research). The analyses use the NSF Science Resources Statistics Surveys of Public Understanding of Science and Technology, made available through site license from the NSF. They were collected under the direction of Dr. Jon D. Miller (now at Northwestern University) 1983 through 1999. My thanks to Jon D. Miller and Linda Kimmel for providing information about the data, and to Raymond Eve, Erich B. Goode, Robert Hashway, Melissa Pollak, Terry Russell, and Alice Robbin for their continuing insights. Christopher M. Tavani, Rose Njoroge, Ryan Wilke, and Michael McAuley provided invaluable research assistance. Of course, the responsibility for any errors or misinterpretation of the results is my own. 74 GENDER AND EDUCATIONAL DIGITAL CHASMS LOSH IT&SOCIETY, Vol. 1, Issue 4, Spring 2003 http://www.ITandSociety. org Using several national surveys of American adults, this study tracks gender, educational level, and computer and Internet access and use from 1983 to 2000. Of all the innovations of the twentieth century—space travel, heart transplants, effective birth control, genetic engineering, television—at the turn of the millennium, a National Public Radio study (2000) reported that Americans rated computers as the most important. Because gender and education can be critical stratification variables, it is important to understand their influence on information technology developments. Most research findings indicate that men use information technology more than women for diverse tasks and entertainment. The better educated also use information technology more than the less educated. The relationship between information technology use and economic well-being is plausibly reciprocal: policy makers and educators worry that inequitable access to and use of information technology accentuates pre-existing gaps between women and men, among wealthier and poorer individuals, and across ethnic groups. Conversely, wealthier or better-educated individuals have easier access to information technology, afford it more readily, and may have cognitive frameworks that make it easier to use. The “digital divide” refers to these gaps in information technology access and use among individuals holding different status positions. Considerable research and some controversy have been attached to the extent of these gaps and the extent to which gaps may have changed. However, to assess change we must examine data over time. Otherwise, as occurs in some recent research, our comparisons become hypothetical at best. ISSUES IN THE DIGITAL “GENDER GAP” Some sex differences in digital technology access and use are to be expected, because women and men have different educational and occupational experiences. American women made significant gains in educational and occupational parity in the twentieth century. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001), women now earn most baccalaureate and master’s college degrees, and over 40 percent of doctorate, law or M.D. degrees. The majority of adult women in a variety of age, marital and parental combinations now hold paid jobs, and the overall distribution by gender in professional and managerial occupations is increasingly similar. In 2000, women were over half of professionals, nearly half of biological or medical scientists, and about one-third of mathematicians, computer scientists, or chemists. Nevertheless, the discrepancies that remain affect information technology access and use. Men elect more science college courses than women, and more often elect high school physics, chemistry, and advanced math courses. Women far less often major in engineering, architecture or the physical sciences, fields in which sophisticated information technology use is common. In 75 GENDER AND EDUCATIONAL DIGITAL CHASMS LOSH IT&SOCIETY, Vol. 1, Issue 4, Spring 2003 http://www.ITandSociety. org 2000, only 10 percent of engineers and 20 percent of engineering technicians were female, fractions only slightly larger than those in 1983, when the data series in this study begin. One-third of all employed women held a clerical or retail sales job, a rate over four times that for employed men in 2000. Many clerical workers use computers for data entry or word processing. Increasingly they access email, frequently internal to an organizational server, for communication. Retail sales workers use “smart cash registers” for calculations and credit card transactions. However, these jobs often do not require Internet use. Clerical or retail sales workers typically do not use computers for analyses, syntheses, or information searchers the way that professionals and managers do. Cognitive skills gained using computers or the Internet on the job, e.g., email, online analyses, diagnostics, information collection and simulations, can transfer to home use. If a clerical worker uses email on the job, she will feel comfortable communicating electronically from home. If a nurse practitioner culls the latest Web information on medication interactions, she will more easily employ information searches on the household computer.