Women rate themselves as less proficient than men in Internet skills

Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times wrote an article several days ago about a study whose results appeared in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly. In 2001 and 2002, a Northwestern University sociologist, Eszter Hargittai, put 100 people of different ages, education levels and ethnicities through a test of online computer proficiency. She then asked them to rate their skill at navigating the Internet and obtaining information.

There were 51 women and 49 men in the study. Hargittai learned a few things she expected to learn: that younger computer users and more educated computer users rated themselves as more proficient than older users or more educated ones. The surprise result for the sociologist was that--despite having equal skills--the women rated their proficiency level lower than the men rated theirs.

"Not a single woman among all our female study subjects called herself an 'expert' user, while not a single male ranked himself as a complete novice or 'not at all skilled'," Hargittai said. She also says she "sees a replay of the he-versus-she math-and-science contest, in which women concede defeat even before an objective score has been tallied."