Internet Usage Subnational Disparity Measure in Mexico: A Gender-Digital Divide Approach

Abstract

The studies on digital divide emphasizes two main tenets in the research agenda: ICT access and ICT usage. Our research seeks to analyze the gender digital divide in terms of ICT usage narrowing our focus on internet use in Mexico. Even though the literature has consistently accumulated evidence of the gender-digital-divide existence in many societies, there is work that can be done to shed a bit more light to the subject. One of the ways to do this is keep seeking to generate ever so slightly more precise characterizations of the divide when sociodemographic and economics factors are taken into account. Therefore, this article seeks to tackle the following entangled empirical questions: Is there geographical patterns in mexicans internet usage? In which social, demographic and economic factors hinges Mexico’s use of internet if any? Does differences exists between men and women in internet use frequency? In order to answer these questions, we used Theil's index methodology with internet usage data from Endutih 2017. We found that there are gender differences between adults over 75 years of age, laborers and people with physical or mental limitations to work. We also confirmed a greater digital inequality in the centre-south of the country and that the most important socio-demographic factors for inequality in internet use are education and age.