Abstract

Gender Issues in HCI Design for Web Access 123
for games), and also used the World Wide Web more. However, it also showed that
girls preferred Web-based lessons to traditional class-based lessons, compared to
boys, and that they favoured working in pairs more that singly. Compared to girls,
boys disliked reading from the screen, since they had more difficulty with longer
pieces of text.
Nachmias et al. (Nachmias, Mioduser, & Shemla, 2001) found significant gender
differences in a study of 384 junior-high and high-school students in Israel. Boys
were more extensive information and communication technology (ICT) users than
girls, in general. They spent about 9.4 hours per week using computers, compared
to around 5.6 hours for girls. The difference was most dramatic at home (6.7 vs.
3.5 hours), whereas school usage was more similar (1.4 vs. 1.3 hours), presumably
because this was largely directed use. On the other hand, a study of 110 eighth and
ninth graders (14-15 year olds) on a 3-month virtual classroom course by Shany &
Nachmias (2001), also based in Israel, did not find any particular correlation between
gender and various uses of ICT (e.g., bulletin boards, forums, e-mail, Web searches,
etc.) with respect to thinking styles in an educational context.
Nielsen (2002a) reports that there are bigger differences between boys and girls
with respect to Web site usability than for men and women, in general. In his study,
he found that 40% of boys complained about verbose Web pages, compared to
8% of girls. On the other hand, girls criticized the lack of instructions much more
(76% vs. 33% for boys). Boys spent more time alone on the computer, whereas
girls spent more time with a parent. However, Nielsen notes that age differences
are more important than gender difference when considering Web design usability.
When it comes to the digital divide, age, education, and income are the key factors,
compared with race/ethnicity/gender, which are statistically insignificant with less
than 5% effect on the rate of access (Nie & Erbring, 2000). Males used the Internet
around 1.2 additional hours per week compared to females, that is, not a huge difference.
Gender differences were found to be more significant for those based or
working at home.
Traditionally, men are more attracted to direct use of computers, but for more indirect
use through other media, the gender balance is more even (Dierking & Falk, 1998).
However, the subject matter being presented also has a bearing, with evidence that
in the case of fine art, females are more prevalent users, even when technology is
used. In the area of online museums, Bowen et al. (1998) noted that an early survey
of virtual visitors recorded 46% as being women, compared to only 22% of highuse
Internet/Web users being female in a more general survey at around the same
time. Thus, the gender balance of those with an interest in culture may be better than
the general case (Bernier, 2002). There is also a bias towards older users visiting
cultural Web sites, compared to the norm on the Internet.
Chadwick and Boverie (1999) considered the gender gap in the number of men vs.
women who completed a museum Web site visitor survey to be worthy of further
study. Around 62% of those who completed the questionnaire were male, and only
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