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Even through technology, women continue to bear a greater burden in health, education and care tasks
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Men make more recreational use of online services
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Digitization skyrockets in Spain due to confinement to reach the fifth highest mark in the EU
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The restrictions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic have led the population to greater consumption of the internet, but this expansion towards the older age group has not been done equally. On the contrary. In recent months, the digital gender gap has widened in Spain, accentuating inequalities between women and men that also occur in society.
This is revealed by the data published this Wednesday in the report Gender Indicators of the Digital Society, prepared by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. The document indicates that up to 91% of citizens regularly connected to the internet during 2020, the fifth largest brand in the European Union. The accelerated digitization experienced last year – the fastest in the last decade – has almost closed the gender gap in connection frequency, but has deepened it in other fields.
With confinement and other social distancing measures we have become accustomed to teleworking, video calls and the use of social networks and platforms. However, these new technological tools also reproduce traditional gender roles. “With the uses of technology for health, education or care purposes, the pandemic has reinforced pre-existing gender inequities, assigning these tasks again to women, also in the digital sphere.”Says the report.
Gender biases
More internet is accessed, yes, but gender biases continue to translate into the use made of the internet. Thus, during the pandemic, not only have women had to adapt to the needs of teleworking, but they have also become more intensively concerned with care in the family environment. “We found that traditional gender roles are perpetuated in digital format”, they point out.
More health and educational uses
The report details that in recent months women have had a greater burden in using the internet for health and educational purposes. 44% of women have done it to make medical appointments and 33% to help the online education of children and other family members, seven and six points more than men respectively. They have also made greater use of video calls and social media.
The data also show that teleworking has been adopted to a greater extent among women, something that has resulted in a perpetuation of the lack of work-life balance, since it is she who continues to assume greater family responsibilities.
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On the other hand, men continue to excel in recreational use of the Internet with activities such as reading the news, watching movies and series or downloading video games.
The report points to two positive signs: the greater digitization of Spanish women compared to those of other European nationalities and that this gender gap disappears in the group ranging from 19 to 24 years old. It is in the population between 55 and 74 years of age where there is a greater distance between men and women, of up to 12%.
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