Gender-Gap in Internet Literacy in India: A State-Level Analysis

Abstract

Internet literacy is the knowledge of using internet facility, deals with intellectual ability of men and women. Internet plays very important role in our daily life to live, learn, work in a society to access information, knowledge, entertainment and improve our skills and internet literacy is one of the basic literacy whereas the gender gap is difference between men and Women in social, political, intellectual, cultural, economic attainments’ or attitudes. The present study analyses gender gap in internet literacy in India using National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5 data employing descriptive statistics, and t test. Study analyses gender gap in internet literacy in all the states of India shows clearly there is considerable level of gender gap among men and women. The finding indicates that just 63.06% of males and 40.65% of females have ever used the internet. Assam has one of the lowest rates of male Internet literacy in India, whereas Goa has one of the highest (82.90). Bihar has the lowest percentage of Internet-literate women, while Sikkim has the most. The gender disparity is most in the state of Telengana, with a score of 30.9, followed by Chhattisgarh (29.6), and it is at its smallest in the state of Sikkim, with a score of 1.5 and the gender difference seems to be more than 20 in the majority of the states.