The Digital Gender Gap

James Strachan | Data Visualisation | #MakeoverMonday | 2020 | Week 44

Introduction
This week was a Viz5 week, again in association with Operation Fistula. The data focussed on the gap between male and female access to the internet and mobile phones in 100 different countries around the world. For context the dataset also included the overall level of internet usage at a household level in each country. In many developing countries the internet is still not available to all, but where it is available there is often a significant skew towards men having more access than women. Denying women access to the internet limits her ability to learn, explore the world and think for herself in turn limiting her opportunities. Needless to say it is a bad thing and equality of access to the internet is highly desirable.

The Operation Fistula / Viz5 Original
As with the last Viz5 week the original data visualisation was broadly ok. If I am being picky, the labels on the map overlap; you have to scroll for a long time on the bar chart to view all the countries; the country labels on the bar chart are very far to the left of the data; and countries are sorted alphabetically, rather than in data order... so I guess there was still quite a lot of scope to improve

My #Vizabit Redesign

This week I was inspired by @VizWizBI to produce a simple scatter plot of Internet Access vs Mobile Phone access, with all the countries on detail. However, I added a few enhancements of my own including: use of country flags as navigation sign-posts; and the use of dashboard actions to ensure the flags weren't too overbearing (only revealing the flag of the selected country to help focus the reader on the data). I also layered a distribution chart of overall internet penetration by country for additional context; and then called out the worst 10 countries for internet and mobile access in two additional charts on the right. 

 

Finally, once happy with the desktop version I formatted for mobile as well.

Try it for yourself...

The version you see will depend on the device you are using