Understanding gender inequality in central e-government: A Korean case study

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Abstract

In this study, we examine gender inequality in the use of the Korean central government website in 2010. Adapting the digital divide and the gender differentiation hypothesis, we analyze e-government users and the determinants of their demand for e-government websites. Specifically, after controlling for socio-economic factors and family characteristics as demand determinants, we test whether gender inequality in e-government access and usage persists across central government units that provide differentiated public services. Our regression results indicate (i) no persistent gender inequality, supporting the gender differentiation hypothesis, and (ii) the importance of family characteristics as a determinant of demands for e-government websites. However, we also find a persistent divide in access to and usage of central e-government services by education and occupation, which deserves more attention and further research.

Introduction

The Information Age has introduced at least two new fields of research: the digital divide and e-government. Much attention has been directed to the digital divide regarding internet access and usage, as the infusion of new media information is believed to increase a knowledge gap between the socio-economically advantaged and the socio-economically disadvantaged (Donohue, Tichenor, & Olien, 1973). Although internet access is often considered to have been equalized by the early 2000s (DiMaggio & Hargittai, 2001), recent studies still note a digital divide in internet usage (Hsieh, Rai, & Keil, 2008). This inequality has been explained by IT literacy (Ferro, Natalie, & Gil-García, 2010) and socio-economic factors such as race and ethnicity, income, location, age, and education (Bélanger & Carter, 2006).

Surprisingly, e-government research has evolved with relatively little interaction with the literature on the digital divide. Although e-government was believed to provide more citizen-oriented public services and to promote more effective and democratic public administration, this new empirical literature has taken a “supply-side” evaluation approach, putting a major emphasis on the evaluations of web-based e-government services in terms of accessibility and content offerings (Park, Choi, & Bok, 2012). Only recently, Helbig, Gil-García, and Ferro (2009) have suggested the potential implications drawn from the digital divide literature for e-government research and practice, including understanding users and some determinants of demand.

In this paper, we study one aspect of the digital divide in usage of e-government websites. Specifically, we focus on gender inequality in the use of the Korean central government websites in 2010. It is widely acknowledged that there was almost no gender inequality in Korean internet access in 2010. However, our data, detailed in Section 3, show substantial gender inequality in both access to and usage of e-government websites. The data indicate that 5% more male internet users than female internet users have logged on to the Korean central e-government websites in 2010 and that these male users spent about one and a half as much time on these e-government sites.1

We aim to analyze this gender inequality in the Korean central e-government, adapting theoretical and empirical studies of digital inequality in general internet usage. In addition, we will explicitly consider internet users' family characteristics as demand predictors and the possibility of different demands by gender for differentiated public services. To our knowledge, the paper is the first attempt to include socio-economic factors, family characteristics and differentiated preferences in the analysis of individual citizens' demands for e-government websites.2

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we will briefly discuss theoretical and empirical studies related to gender inequality in internet use, proceeding to address our research question. In Section 3, we will detail our data and our research design for gender inequality in e-government usage. Section 4 will present our findings. We will conclude in Section 5.

Section snippets

Literature review and research question

In the digital divide literature, inequality in internet usage has been explained by socio-economic factors and by individual differences in IT literacy (Bélanger and Carter, 2006, Ferro et al., 2010). However, recently users' interest and motivation have been added to possible sources of the internet usage divide. For instance, Min (2010) analyzes General Social Survey data to show that political internet users are individuals with high political interest as well as developed internet skills.

Research design

We aim to empirically examine whether a gender divide exists in the Korean central e-government website usage, even after controlling for gender differentiation, family characteristics and socio-economic factors such as age, occupation, income, education and location. Notably, we do not include IT literacy in our analysis because no relevant data are available on this variable in our data. However, Dholakia (2006) finds no statistical evidence of gender differences in internet familiarity and

Analysis and discussion

We have conducted separate regressions for each subdivision of government units (as shown in Table 1) as well as for the all units combined to see if the significance of gender inequality persists across different types of e-government services. Table 4 presents the main regression results for gender inequality in access to e-government websites, while Table 5 provides the main regression results for gender inequality with regard to usage. The complete regression results in either case are

Conclusion

In the analysis of gender inequality in the central e-government usage, we focused on e-government users and the determinants of their demands for e-government website usage. Adapting the digital divide literature and the gender differentiation hypothesis, we were able to test whether gender inequality regarding access to and usage of the central e-government websites persists across different types of the central government units that provide differentiated public services.

Our regression

Sangin Park is a Professor of the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University and also serves as an Associate Editor of International Journal of E-Government Research. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1996–2003), and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University (Fall 2002). He has published a number of papers in academic journals including Review of Economics and Statistics

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Sangin Park is a Professor of the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University and also serves as an Associate Editor of International Journal of E-Government Research. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1996–2003), and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University (Fall 2002). He has published a number of papers in academic journals including Review of Economics and Statistics and Journal of Econometrics and serve as the editor of several books including Strategies and Polices in Digital Convergence. His current research interests include communications policy, competition policy, and e-governance. Dr. Park holds a Ph. D. in Economics from Yale University.

Yeon-Tae Choi is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Public Administration at Kyungnam University. His research interests incldue e-government, IT policy, and policy evaluation. Dr. Choi holds a Ph. D. in Public Administration from Seoul National University.

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