Just the Facts
International Women’s Day 2023

March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), which serves as an opportunity to highlight and reflect upon the status of progress made towards achieving gender equality. This year, the United Nations (UN) Women’s theme for IWD is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.” This article uses data from a variety of Statistics Canada sources to highlight diverse groups of women’s access to and use of the Internet, as well as their representation in certain fields of study and occupations related to digital technologies.

More than half of women in rural areas do not have access to high-speed Internet at home

The Internet can provide a plethora of benefits and opportunities for women and girls (and people more generally). Equal access to the Internet—especially high-speed Internet—is paramount to ensuring that all women can fully engage with and benefit from it. However, gaps in access to high-speed Internet exist among women in Canada based on certain characteristics.

The vast majority (93.6%) of women aged 15 years and over in Canada had access to the Internet at home in 2020.^Note  However, almost 3 in 10 (28.8%) women reported that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps,^Note Note  although this proportion varied by characteristics (Table 1). For example, more than half (54.1%) of women in rural areas reported that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps, compared to less than one-quarter (22.9%) of women in urban areas. Older women (i.e., 36.0% of those aged 55 to 64 years and 37.3% of those aged 65 years and over), women whose highest level of education was high school or less (34.2%), and women who were unemployed (33.7%) were also more likely to report that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps.

It should be noted that these findings are not exclusive to women. That is, the proportions of women and men who reported that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps were not significantly different from each other. Further, access to high-speed Internet among men also varied by characteristics, such as age, whether they lived in rural or urban areas, highest level of education, and employment status. For example, less than one-quarter (23.6%) of men in urban areas reported that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps, compared to half (50.1%) of their counterparts in rural areas. Additionally, unemployed men were more likely to report that their home Internet connection download speed was less than 50 Mbps than men who were employed (33.4% vs. 25.2%, respectively).

Women’s online activities vary across different characteristics

The Internet can facilitate women’s access to key information (e.g., information related to health, education, and employment) and services. Notably, the proportion of women who use the Internet to access certain information and services varies by characteristics (Table 2).

Overall, 7 in 10 (70.9%) women in Canada reported that they had researched for information on health over the Internet during the past three months in 2020. However, only half (49.2%) of women aged 65 years and over reported doing so, compared to more than 4 in 5 women aged 25 to 34 years and 35 to 44 years.

Likewise, the extent to which women used the Internet for educational purposes also varied by certain characteristics. In 2020, almost one-quarter (23.9%) of women reported using the Internet to take formal training or learning through an organization or institution during the past three months. Whereas 3 in 10 (30.3%) women in the highest census family income quartile reported using the Internet for this purpose, this was the case for less than 1 in 5 (18.1%) women in the lowest census family income quartile.

In 2020, one-fifth (19.9%) of women reported that they had used the Internet to search for employment during the past three months. The proportions of racialized and landed immigrant women who reported using the Internet to search for employment were almost double that of their non-racialized and non-landed immigrant counterparts.^Note 

Women are under-represented in certain fields of study and occupations related to digital technologies

In 2020, women in Canada accounted for 26.8% of 16-to-24-year-olds who could program. In comparison, in 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average was 29.7%.^Note  In line with this, gender gaps exist with respect to women’s representation in certain fields of study related to digital technologies. In 2021, women accounted for less than one-third (29.0%) of all postsecondary qualification holders aged 25 to 64 years with a credential in computer and information sciences.^Note 

Some groups of women, however, were better represented than others. For example, women accounted for about one-third of immigrants (33.6%) and racialized people (33.9%) with a postsecondary credential in computer and information sciences, compared to approximately one-quarter of Canadian-born (24.0%) and non-racialized (24.3 %) people with a credential in this field. Filipino women represented almost half (46.9%) of all Filipino people with a postsecondary credential in computer and information sciences.^Note 

Still, there is a high rate of job mismatch among women who study computer and information sciences. About 1 in 3 (31.5%) women aged 25 to 64 years with a postsecondary credential in computer and information sciences who worked in 2020 or 2021 worked in STEM occupations in mathematics, computer and information sciences, compared to half (50.1%) of men with a postsecondary credential in this field.^Note 

As a result of the under-representation of women in the computer and information sciences field of study, added to the high rate of job mismatch, women are under-represented in related occupations. Canadian businesses in the private sector that reported they had information and communication technologies (ICT) specialists in 2021 indicated that women^Note  comprised about 1 in 5 (21.3%) of these specialists.^Note 

Almost 1 in 5 women experience unwanted sexual behaviour online

Online spaces are not safe for everyone. In 2018, almost one-fifth (18.4%) of women experienced unwanted sexual behaviour online in the past 12 months, compared to 13.6% of men. The prevalence of unwanted sexual behaviour online in the past 12 months was particularly high among bisexual women (49.7%), First Nations (33.8%) and Métis (30.0%) women, women aged 15 to 24 years (32.8%), single women (30.9%), women attending school (29.4%), and women with disabilities (26.8%).^Note Note 

Note to readers

Data from the Canadian Internet Use Survey exclude the territories and full-time (residing for more than six months) residents of institutions. Data presented here from the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces also exclude the territories.

For data from the Canadian Internet Use Survey, as well as the 2021 Census, “women” includes women, as well as some non-binary persons. Given that the non-binary population is small, data aggregation to a two-category gender variable is sometimes necessary to protect the confidentiality of responses provided. In these cases, individuals in the category "non-binary persons" are distributed into the other two gender categories. For data from the Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces, “women” only includes women. For more details on the new gender concept, see Age, Sex at Birth and Gender Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2021. A fact sheet on gender concepts, Filling the gaps: Information on gender in the 2021 Census, is also available.

In this release, data on “racialized women” are measured with the “visible minority” variable. The “non-racialized group” is measured with the “not a visible minority” category of the variable, excluding Indigenous respondents. For the purpose of this study, Indigenous respondents are not part of the racialized group, nor the non-racialized group. “Visible minority” refers to whether or not a person belongs to one of the visible minority groups defined by the Employment Equity Act. The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.” The visible minority population consists mainly of the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese.

Urban areas refer to population centres. A population centre has a population of at least 1,000 and a population density of 400 persons or more per square kilometre, based on population counts from the 2016 Census of Population. All areas outside population centres are classified as rural areas.

Landed immigrants are permanent residents who have indicated a year of landing in Canada since 1980.