BetterA gap of six percentage points sounds like the one you would fix first. It is the narrowest of the five divides the ITU tracks.
It is also the only one that has not moved at all.
77% of men use the internet; 71% of women do. In people, that is about 280 million more men than women online.
Since 2019 the total number of internet users has grown by nearly 45%. Over the same six years, the global gender parity score went from 0.92 to 0.92.
Everything grew. The ratio did not move.
The instrumentWhat a parity score actually measures
It is a ratio, not a difference, and that distinction is what makes it useful.
The ITU defines the gender parity score as the female percentage divided by the male percentage. Parity is deemed achieved between 0.98 and 1.02.
71 divided by 77 gives 0.92.
A ratio survives growth. If both figures rise by the same proportion, the score does not move, which is exactly what makes it able to detect that nothing has changed while everything got bigger.
The findingSix years, no movement
Two numbers from the same chapter, put side by side. The ITU publishes them in consecutive paragraphs.
The ITU's own conclusion, in the chapter's subtitle, is four words long: a lack of progress in closing the gender gap in Internet use. Institutions do not usually title a chapter with what did not happen.
Why this matters more than the six points. Six points is small enough to look like a rounding problem that growth will absorb. Six years of record growth have now tested that idea directly. Connecting hundreds of millions of additional people did not close it by a single hundredth.
By regionWhere it moved, and where it went backwards
The global flat line is an average of things going in different directions.
- Parity reached in Europe, the Americas, and the CIS region.
- Asia-Pacific went backwards0.92 in 2019, 0.91 in 2025. Small, but it is a decline, not a plateau.
- The Arab States did not move, staying at 0.86 across the whole period.
- Africa improved most, from 0.70 to 0.78, still behind the others, and the largest measured gain of the six years.
So the flat global figure is not a world standing still. It is a world where the regions that had already arrived stayed arrived, one region moved, and the largest ones did not.
The counter-exampleThe exception that breaks the excuse
There is a standard answer to all of this: connect the country first, and equality will follow once there is enough connection to go around. The ITU's data contain a case that tests it.
Their parity score has been at or above 1 since 2019women as connected as men, or more.
And less than two-thirds of their population uses the internet at all.
The ITU calls this a notable, positive exception to the strong correlation between parity and overall internet use. In plain terms: they reached equality without waiting to reach abundance.
Which closes the question the three articles of this series opened. The digital divide is not one gap that closes as connection spreads. It is several, they answer to different things, and at least one of them has spent six years proving that growth alone will not touch it.
QuestionsFrequently asked questions
What is the gap between women and men online?
77 per cent of men use the internet compared with 71 per cent of women, according to the ITU for 2025. Six points. In people, that is about 280 million more men than women online worldwide.
What is a parity score?
It is the female percentage divided by the male percentage. The ITU considers parity achieved when the score is between 0.98 and 1.02. The global score is 0.92 in 2025.
Is the gap closing?
No. That is the chapter's central finding: the global score of 0.92 in 2025 is the same as in 2019. The ITU concludes that in recent years there has been no progress towards global gender parity. Over the same period, the total number of internet users grew by nearly 45%.
Are there regions where parity is reached?
Yes: Europe, the Americas, and the Commonwealth of Independent States region. In the other direction, Asia-Pacific has slightly declined, from 0.92 in 2019 to 0.91 in 2025, and the Arab States have stayed flat at 0.86.
Do you have to connect a country first for parity to follow?
The ITU's data contradict that idea. Small island developing states have had a parity score at or above 1 since 2019 even though less than two-thirds of their population uses the internet. The ITU calls them a notable, positive exception to the usual correlation.
Which region improved most?
Africa. Its score went from 0.70 to 0.78 in six years, the largest measured improvement, even though the region remains behind the others. It is the only substantial movement in an otherwise motionless picture.
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Sources
About this article. General and educational information. The figures come from the International Telecommunication Union's Facts and Figures 2025 report, chapter “The gender digital divide”, and from the press release of 17 November 2025. These are global estimates, as the ITU states. The categories “women” and “men” are those of the national surveys whose results the ITU aggregates.
Spotted an error or an out-of-date figure? Write to us: we will correct it and re-date the article. Our texts are written with the help of artificial intelligence and checked against official sources before publication, but a figure or a definition can change without us catching it. If anything here does not match what an official body tells you, they are right.