Women Less Likely to Talk About Politics On-line (STATISTA)

 Women Less Likely To Talk About Politics On-line

by Katharina Buchholz,

 Oct 26, 2026

Women are more likely to be hesitant in expressing their opinions about politics online than men, a survey by Statista Consumer Insights has found. This was the case in all of the 32 countries polled, with the gender gap narrowest in Italy at 3 percentage points (20 percent male, 17 percent female) and widest in Indonesia and Malaysia at 13 percentage points. Japan, Canada, Finland and Spain also saw narrower gaps at 5–6 percentage points, while larger gaps of 12 percentage points were observed in Sweden, South Africa and Austria.

Even aside from gender, the degree to which people express their views on politics online varies greatly by country. In China, for example, only 14 percent of respondents on average said they had expressed their opinion about politics online in the past month. This includes having commented on or even liked a post related to politics on social media. In Japan, the figure was even lower at just 8 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, there's the Philippines, where 38 percent (42 percent of men and 34 percent of women) said they had done so, followed by South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia at 30–32 percent.

Looking at data on respondents having expressed themselves on other topics in the past month, men were more willing to comment on some topics while women are more willing to comment on others. Topics with a more equal ratio of men to women expressing opinions in the U.S. include music and movies/series.

With regard to the sphere of political discussion, online literature offers various insights and reasons for the gendered pattern. For example, one study notes that “women are less likely than men to participate in political deliberation because they were socialized to avoid these discussions or because they were, for a long time, restricted from political spaces in general.”

Meanwhile, another study found that where men are more likely than women to report commenting for corrective reasons or with the intent to inform others, women are more likely than men to report reading comments in order to gauge the public’s opinions.

You will find more infographics at Statista