• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 5, 2010

According to a comScore study, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8% of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7% of men.

Globally, women demonstrate higher levels of engagement with social networking sites. Although women account for 47.9% of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57% of pages and account for nearly 57% of total minutes spent on these sites. Women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to men's 4 hours.

Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president, says "... women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online... but it's also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption..."

Social Networking's reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1% of females online, and in North America where it reached 91.0% of females. Europe saw 85.6% of its female online population visit a social networking site in May 2010, while in Asia Pacific, where parts of the region still face low broadband penetration and site restrictions, reported a 54.9-percent reach.

Additional findings from the report include:

• Although men are in the majority across the global Internet, women spend about 8% more time online, averaging 25 hours per month on the Web
• Globally, women spend 20% more time on Retail sites overall than men. Among the various retail sub-categories, Comparison Shopping and Apparel sites reached the highest percentage of women at 24.8% and 18.7%, respectively, in May 2010
• In the U.S., women are more avid online buyers than men, with 12.5% of female Internet users making an online purchase in February 2010, compared to 9.3% of men
•  Health sites show some of the largest overall differences in reach between female and male, with a nearly 6-point gap between global women and men
•  In most countries women spend far less time watching online video than men, but women spend a much higher share of their time watching videos on YouTube than men
•  In both the U.S. and Europe, smartphone usage is dominated by men with both markets experiencing close to a 60/40 split in smartphone adoption between the genders

To learn more about the study, and to download a PDF copy of Women on the Web, please visit here.