Girls in Canada's high schools are less confident on computers and the Internet than boys and use them less, says a study that describes a new kind of digital divide in Canadian society.
The new digital divide, says the study released yesterday by Statistics Canada, is not about access to computers and the Internet — that gap has all but disappeared, it says — but about a gender gap when it comes to attitudes and opportunities in a knowledge-based economy that relies heavily on a computer-literate work force.
"The gap is important because it might perpetuate the male advantage in the workplace," said Dianne Looker, a sociology professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S. "The males are still more likely to get jobs and more likely to get good jobs. If the predictions are correct — that one needs skills and needs a diversity of skills — then the boys are being positioned better."
Prof. Looker and Victor Thiessen, a sociology professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, are co-authors of the study.
Boys, their study finds, tend to use computers and the Internet to do more things and they tend to use computers more often than girls. Moreover, the girls surveyed in the study reported feeling less confident on computers than boys and believe computer skills were less important than other things.
These discrepancies, the study's authors conclude, "will have serious implications for the divisions among youth in terms of their access to the presumed benefits of the information society."
The study did not link academic performance in high school to computer use, but it did suggest that gender disparity may affect job opportunities and future incomes.
"Being totally computer-literate is an absolutely necessary part of society these days. If you're going to be successful in a position that is a managerial or a higher-level position, you need to be literate in technology and computers," said Norm Dray, director of education for the Saskatoon East School Division.
The study used special data sets maintained by Statistics Canada and was augmented by telephone interviews done during 2000 with 25,000 high-school students across the country.
Almost all of those surveyed — about 97 per cent — said they had used a computer during the 12 months prior to the survey. That high rate of access was the same whether the student was from a school in one of Canada's biggest cities or from a school in a remote, rural area of the country.
That finding seems to vindicate one of the key policy goals for the federal government's SchoolNet program, an initiative whose goal to put an Internet-connected computer in every public library and school in the country was achieved in 1999. Since 1995-96, the federal government has invested about $218-million in SchoolNet.
The study's authors say the public-policy challenge now is to shrink the digital divide when it comes to how computers and the Internet are being used. They hope to do more research in this area, Prof. Looker said.
Prof. Looker said one of the significant findings of her study was that the digital divide no longer seems to exist along urban and rural lines.
The study said that 97 per cent of both boys and girls surveyed said they had used a computer in the 12 months prior to taking the survey. Similarly, more than 90 per cent of both boys and girls said they had used the Internet.
Instead, the digital divide now relates to use of computers. The authors found gender and the educational background influenced use.
"Female youths and those from families with low levels of parental education are less likely to have access to computers in their homes [and] they tend to spend less time on the computer and they tend to report lower levels of computer skills competency," the report says.
For example, when asked to rate their own computer skills, 38 per cent of the boys surveyed said their skills were "excellent" while just 17 per cent of the girls rated themselves as highly. When asked if they agreed with the statement, "It's very important to work with computers," 70 per cent of the boys agreed but just 58 per cent of the girls agreed.
At Mr. Dray's school district in Saskatchewan, computer instruction is not a separate course. Computers are used as a tool in every class from English to social studies. He says that helps underline the value of the computer as a tool for both boys and girls.
"If it's totally integrated into their instructional program and they recognize what it can do, they're going to see the importance more," Mr. Dray said.
Overall, the study found that boys used computers and the Internet in more diverse ways — using spreadsheet and graphics programs, for example — and the boys were more likely to use diverse software programs every day.
"These diverse skills are ones that would serve the young men well when applying for high skilled jobs using information and communication technologies," the study's authors said.
