Men on the Net

It is often said that the Internet was created by men for men. In the early days it was certainly a very male dominated world. Most internet users were men. Most websites provided information by men that was directed at men. Most commercial websites ignored the fact that many 'men's products' are actually chosen by women.

Recent surveys do not detect very much difference in the amount of internet time spent per week between men and women. The average per Internet user is 5 hours per week. Usage does increase for other factors such as higher levels of education, income, hours worked per week, urban living.

A recent study of Internet users in New Jersey had two conclusions. Men think they're much better at it than they really are. Women are as good at using the Web as men.

Where have we heard this before. In the study researcher Eszter Hargittai found that "none of the men claimed to be complete novices" and "none of the women claimed to be experts."

Yet when Hargittai and research partner Steven Shafter of Princeton University followed the group through a series of search tasks, "with respect to being able to find different types of content, men and women pretty much did the same," she says. "It could either be that women are underestimating their skills or men are overestimating their skills. I can't say which."

In another ongoing study of the Internet in the U.S. collected by the Pew Organisation did conclude that men are slightly more intense about their Internet use than women and that women are more "enthusiastic" and "robust" e-mail communicators, while men tend to explore more areas on the Web than women do but in less depth.

Men are more likely than women to use the internet as a destination for recreation. Men are more likely to: gather material for their hobbies, read online for pleasure, take informal classes, participate in sports fantasy leagues, download music and videos, remix files, and listen to radio.

Men are noticeably more interested than women in technology, and they are also more tech savvy but overall the research shows that men and women are more similar than different in their online lives.

Most of the research on this subject is from the US. Let's take a look down and see what the Aussie men get up to on the net. The Australian Broadcasting Authority observed that the most pronounced differences in the use of Internet services were in the following areas:

• surfing the Net (80% of men compared with 69% of women);
• trading and auctions (23% men vs. 14% women);
• accessing news (58% men vs. 38%women );
• looking at sexual content (25% men vs. 6% women); and
• banking and paying bills (36% men vs. 25% women).

Having established, with the possible exception of Australia that men and women are more similar than different in their online lives, what about the design of usability and style of a website?

In a recent study by Gloria Moss at Glamorgan University Business School in Wales. Men tended to assign higher ratings to pages designed by men and women by women.

Men responded better to dark colours and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of "self-propelling" rather than stationary objects. Women seemed to like pages with more colour in the background and typeface. Women also favoured informal rather than posed pictures.

With those standards in mind, the researchers checked out the Web sites for 32 British universities and determined that 94% had a "masculine orientation." (Further research found that 74%, were produced by a man or a predominantly male team.)

So should Web sites consider having two faces, one for male users and another for female visitors? Moss said more research is needed but "If website flow is to be maximised, greater attention needs to be given to the production aesthetic used and the consequent appeal websites will have to their target markets. Given the strong tendency for each sex to prefer the output of its own sex, it does not make sense to attempt to appeal to women using an aesthetic which is largely male."

The Internet is for users, men can easily stay in their own web world if they want to. A world that is difficult to define with so many different men in the 21st Century. Metro man surfing for fashion and face cream, Geeky man downloading the latest software, and Sporty man checking the latest sport results.