Gender gap in social media usage wide in Arab world
dubai — While social media use in the Arab World has been increasing, a new study has revealed a gender gap in usage.
Early findings from the upcoming Arab Social Media Report 2017, which will be fully released in January by the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG), showed that only one third of the Arab social media users are women, which equals one female for every two males in the Arab region.
Only 32 per cent of Facebook users were woman and only 27 per cent were on LinkedIn, according to the study conducted on the 22 countries of the Arab World.
“Previous research showed that social media is empowering women, but the number of Arab female social media users is much smaller than the global average,” said Fadi Salem, Director of Governance and Innovation Programme at MBRSG, who made the announcement during the Arab Social Media Influencers Summit.
However, he added, women’s use of social media to access the job market is increasing, indicating the presence of job opportunities for women in the Arab World.
With over 120 million social media users, Twitter and LinkedIn showed a slower growth here, said Salem. The largest number of Facebook users are in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and it was the first time Algeria ranked in the third place.
However, the UAE and Qatar were the two countries with highest penetration of Facebook, with more than 80 per cent of their populations using the platform. “These are the only two countries above 80 per cent,” said Salem. Yemen, Egypt, Palestine and Libya were the other top countries to use Facebook in 2016. Globalisation also showed its impact, as the use of Arabic language within the
female for every two males uses social media in
the Arab world GCC was much less than other Arabic countries. The UAE was placed after Comoros in the countries that used Arabic language the least on Facebook.
On Instagram, English was the most used language in the Arab World, followed by Arabic.
Another trend noticed was the maturity of age groups using social media — the report showed that two-thirds of users in the Arab World are young, with the number of users above the age of 30 in constant increase. In UAE, for example, almost 50 per cent of Facebook users are over 30.
Among the countries mostly mentioned on social media in 2016, Saudi Arabia came on top, followed by Yemen, Syria and the UAE. The highest number of tweets per day came from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
Over the past six years, the MBRSG released seven reports monitoring the use of social media platforms in the Arab World and
Previous research showed that social media is empowering women, but the number of Arab female social media users is much smaller than the global average.”
Fadi Salem, Director of Governance and Innovation Program at MBRSG
its role in the growth and development of Arab societies.
In the future, it will monitor public policy, decision-making and the government of the future.
sherouk@khaleejtimes.com