As part of Ipsos’s annual Global Trends survey, we track how attitudes and sentiments are evolving across tens of thousands of people worldwide.

One of the many interesting data points it unearthed showed that 29% of people in Great Britain agree that the main role of a woman is to be a good wife and mother.¹

This persistence of gender roles surprised us. It also intrigued us.

Within iris, we’ve completed numerous deep dives into various online categories – retail, travel, social media, mobile gaming, fitness & exercise – and very often, women would be the bigger audience, the bigger opportunity – the bigger story.

We capture every click and tap of over 10,000 people in the UK. Does our data show that the internet is the great equaliser? Or can we see that these gender roles persist online too?

One of the most surprising things about that 29% figure is that it appears to be rising.

This is the highest the number has been over the ten years it has been tracked in the Global Trends Survey.

And while it is often assumed that each generation will be more progressive than the last, we can see that 16-24 year olds (38%) and 25-34 year olds (41%) were actually more likely to hold this traditional view of women.

We saw a similar pattern in Ipsos research conducted for this year’s Internation Women’s Day. Gen Z and Millennial men were more likely to agree with the statement that  ‘a man who stays home to look after his children is less of a man’ (both saw 31% agree) compared to Gen X (23%) and Baby Boomers (10%).²

So younger generations appear to have some more traditional views of both men and women.

But are these views matched by the behaviours we see online?

Women make up 51% of the total online population in the UK, but they account for 54% of all time spent online.³

That may sound like a relatively small margin, but that equates to around half an hour longer online a day or over 17 hours longer per month.

One of the categories where we see women spending considerably more time than men is Retail & Commerce, with women accounting for 63% of all time spent on retail sites and apps.

If we go down another level, we can see women spend more time on 20 out of the 27 retail subcategories we have in the platform: from Fashion to Fast Food & Delivery, from Consumer Electronics to Health.

If we go down another level still, we can see that women spend more time on 20 out of the top 25 online retail brands in the UK, including Amazon, Apple, Temu, and Argos.⁴

So women spend more time on retail overall, across the majority of subcategories, on most of the biggest retail brands.

For retailers, this all adds up to make women a very important audience. For women, this buying power means that things like customer and user experience should be built with them in mind, as for many brands, they are the majority user.

But is there a fine line between power and responsibility?

Because we can also see in our iris data that just under half of men (48%) identify as the main shopper of all or most of the food items in their household, compared to over two thirds (67%) of women⁵. So, it appears that the responsibility of the grocery shop sits more on women.

This is borne out by what we see when we look at grocery brands, with women accounting for the majority of the audience – as well as most of the time spent – on all ten of the biggest supermarket brands in the UK.

On average, women also visit a higher number of grocery brands each month compared to men (3.5 vs 2.7) and visit on a higher number of days (9.2 vs 7.1)⁶. The gap between men and women widens for both statistics when we look specifically at those who are partnered and have children in the household. Parenthood seems to put an even great onus on women.

Another area where can see evidence of gender roles online is around taking care: of women taking care of others as well as taking care of themselves.

In the careers category, for example, we can see that women make up 50% of the audience for careers online, but they only account for 44% of time spent on the category.⁷

When we break this down by age, we can see that the gap is widest between men and women during the ages of 25 and 44, the period when people are most likely to be starting a family.

Indeed, when we compare how parenthood affects men and women’s online engagement with careers, we can see significant differences.

For male parents, while there is a gap in engagement compared to the ‘all men’ group between the ages of 18-24, there is no real difference after this point. In fact, we can see between the ages of 35-44 and 55-64, male parents are spending more time on their careers online compared to all men.⁸

For female parents on the other hand, we can see there is an engagement gap when compared to the all women group all the way from 18 to 55.

So, parenthood seems to have a greater – and more prolonged – effect on women’s online engagement with careers than it does for men.

Of course, just because women spend less time on their careers online, this doesn’t mean they are less interested in their career or career progression in general.

Not least because within our data, we can see that in the first half of the year, women were more likely to be making online searches around ‘salary’ and ‘pay rise’.

Women accounted for 56% of all people searching for terms including the word ‘salary’ on search engines in the first six months of 2024, and 59% of those searching for ‘pay rise’.⁹

Concerningly, women also accounted for 76% of all people searching for terms related to ‘burnout’. Another indicator, albeit a negative one, that women are no less engaged in their career.

But there could be two forces at work here: the first and most obvious is that women are more likely to be experiencing burnout, hence they are more likely to search for it.

Another factor though, is the perception that women are better at taking care of themselves. That if they are feeling the effects of something they are more likely to take action than men. This something we see the symptoms of online too.

Because if we move across to the health category, we can see that that pattern we see for ‘burnout’ echoes what we see with engagement across health more generally: women spend much more time on the category.

That applies both to both general health – which covers medical sites and apps like the NHS and WebMD – as well as physical fitness – which covers fitness trackers, gyms and fitness content – where we see women make up around 60% of all time spent on the category.¹⁰

When we look at mental health & wellbeing, we see an even greater imbalance, with women accounting for 8 in every 10 minutes on the category. This covers mental health content on the NHS and charity and support websites, as well as meditation and mental health apps.

While the gap in engagement is smaller for younger men (74% vs 26%), the gap is still pretty sizeable. For those aged 55+, women make up the vast majority of time spent on mental health & wellbeing category (92% vs 8%).¹¹

Obviously a lot has been done over the last decade or two to destigmatise mental health and get people talking about it – particularly for young men.

It’s concerning to see that there may be a gap in reading about it too. That even in the private bubble of the internet, there is such a disparity between men and women.

There’s lot’s we can do as individuals and as a society to help unravel some of these gender roles, but there also plenty of things that we can do with the marketing and media space.

1. Know your audience

It’s crucial to ensure you fully understand who your audience is and that you are meeting their needs and identifying any gaps. You can’t assume who your audience is, or that you’re automatically reaching different demographics equally.

In the areas we’ve looked for this study, it looks like women are currently under-served by the careers sites and apps available. What additional online resources could be offered for young mums, for example? Similarly we saw in mental health that engagement amongst men still lags far behind women. More needs to be done to understand the resources that would best serve men.

And we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of the areas that we see challenges and opportunities for women.

2. Show your audience

Lead by example and create content and marketing that challenges stereotypes and exhibits positive role models.

An Ipsos study of ads in the US between 2019 and 2021 showed that women were predominantly shown as wives (30% of ads studies) and mothers (27%) and that they’re most likely to be depicted in the kitchen / living room (both 22%).¹²

Similarly, a financial study from Brunel University in collaboration with Starling Bank, looked at 600 photographs used for articles about money and finance¹³. It found that men were generally shown to be in control and making financial decisions, while women were shown clutching piggy banks and counting pennies

It’s an old mantra, but you can’t be what you can’t see, so it’s important that we play a role in showcasing men and women in diverse roles.

3. Grow your audience

At Ipsos we have our GEM Index (or Gender Equality Measure) that helps us to measure gender portrayal in ads and content over four key areas:

• Presentation – what is the overall opinion of the person presented
• Respect – Are the presented in a respectful manner in the ads
• Appropriate – Are they depicted appropriately
• Role Model  – Can they be seen as a role model for other men/women

And the GEM index show that progressive female portrayal is good for business.

Both in the short-term, where our European study showed that ads with high Gender Equality Measure scores for female portrayal saw a 32% increase in sales; as well as in the long term, where the same study showed a 33% increased in brand equity when the GEM scores were high.¹⁴

So these positive portrayals and this deconstruction of gender roles really is a win-win for both society and for business.

About Ipsos iris 

Ipsos iris is the UKOM endorsed service for the measurement of audiences of online content.  

We passively track the online behaviour of a single-source panel of over 10,000 UK adults, who install software across their devices (a combination of smartphones, tablets, PCs and laptops).  

The panel is recruited to be representative of the internet population demographically, geographically and by device type use. This passive data is fused with anonymous, device-level data derived from site-centric tags on hundreds of the biggest sites and apps to create a synthetic panel of around 1 million synthetic panellists. More detail on the methodology can be found here. 

About the Gender Equality Measure 

The Gender Equality Measure is the first research measure that quantifies gender bias in ads and programming. It measures over 200,000+ ads worldwide, representing 87% of worldwide ad spend. 

Ipsos includes gender equality measure questions in all its ad testing research for ads that feature people. We ask questions of both boys/men and girls/women around gender portrayal focusing on four key areas: Presentation (what is the overall opinion of the person presented); Respect (are they presented in a respectful manner in the ads); Appropriate (are they depicted inappropriately); Role Model (can they be seen as a role model for other people of their gender) 

To generate the GEM Index score, each measurement characteristic is benchmarked and indexed against the average score for each of the four. The total GEM score is the average index of the four characteristics giving equal weight to each input. An Index of 100 signifies an average score. 

[1] Ipsos Global Trends 2023. For full methodology see ipsosglobaltrends.com

[2] Ipsos International Women’s Day, March 2024

[3] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Aug 23 – Jul 24, All aged 15+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[4] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, July 2024, All aged 15+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[5] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, July 2024, All aged 15+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[6] Ipsos iris passive data, June 2024, All aged 15+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[7] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Aug 23 – Jul 24, All aged 18+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[8] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Aug 23 – Jul 24, All aged 18+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[9] Ipsos iris passive data – browser only, June 2024, All aged 18+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[10] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Apr – Jul 24, All aged 18+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[11] Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Apr – Jul 24, All aged 18+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s).

[12] Ipsos GEM Database, 2019-2021. Base of 926 ads.

[13]Gendered representation of money in visual media, Brunel University and Starling Bank, May 2021.

[14] Ipsos ads tested using Creative Spark in Europe which feature a female character in the top 1/3 of the Ipsos GEM® Database between 2021-23 (1,963 in total)