Technologies

Gender inequality online is ‘expensive for all of us,’ says web inventor’s foundation

Tim Berners-Lee’s Web Foundation hopes governments will be spurred to act upon seeing the economic cost of the digital gender divide.

This story is part of Crossing the Broadband Divide, CNET’s coverage of how the country is working toward making broadband access universal.

When women and girls don’t have access to the internet, it costs governments a lot of money. How much money, exactly, has only been estimated, until now.

New research released Monday by Tim Berners-Lee‘s Web Foundation and its subsidiary, Alliance for Affordable Internet, has calculated that over the past 10 years, 32 low- and middle-income countries have lost $1 trillion by not helping more women get online. Some of those countries include India, Nigeria and the Philippines.

The digital divide is a global problem, but there are still distinct groups that are less likely to have access to the internet. These groups can be defined by their geography, their gender, their race, or all three. Women in low- and middle-income countries are even less likely to have internet access than their male counterparts.

«This report reveals just how expensive gender inequality is for all of us,» Boutheina Guermazi, director of digital development for the World Bank, said in a statement. «For governments looking to build a resilient economy as part of their COVID-19 recovery plans, closing the digital gender gap should be one of the top priorities.»

In the 32 countries the Web Foundation looked at in its report, just over a third of women had access to the internet, compared with almost half of all men. And this divide doesn’t seem to be closing over time, even as digital connectivity plays an increasingly central role in our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has shown how vital it is to have access to internet at home, for everything from remote school to health care. Over the past decade, the gap between the number of women and men online has dropped by only half a percentage point, the Web Foundation’s research says.

The lack of internet access for women means many are excluded from education and employment opportunities, which often keeps them in poverty or other dangerous situations, without access to health care or other assistance. That alone should be enough for governments to want to try to close that gender divide, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Inclusive broadband policies for economic gains

With its new report, the Web Foundation is laying out the cost of the digital gender divide in stark economic terms, in the hope it’ll be the push that governments need to take the problem seriously. According to the report’s calculations, closing the digital gender gap in the next five years could help generate an enticing $524 billion for the economies of the countries studied.

«It is not just good social policy, but it’s also good economics … to include women and girls in the online world,» Teddy Woodhouse, the Web Foundation’s senior research manager for access and affordability, said in an interview. For him, the big test of the report will be whether the information awakens new allies and helps move the needle in closing the digital gender gap. «It’s really trying to be quite practical and thinking about how can we build a case for change,» he said.

Focusing on the broad financial implications is also a way to ensure that the digital gender divide isn’t dismissed by those in power, as gender equality debates so often are, added Ana María Rodríguez Pulgarín, one of the report’s co-authors.

«Sometimes our gender discussions are with politicians that are already working on gender equality, closing the digital gender divide and all that,» she said. «But I think we want to bring the message that this will affect everyone.»

One of the main problems identified in the research as holding women back from getting on the internet is a lack of gender-responsive broadband policy — explicit targets for ensuring women have internet access.

Governments interested in narrowing the digital gender divide have a number of areas to choose from where they implement policy, including rights, education, access and content. Woodhouse pointed to Costa Rica as an example of a country that has implemented such measures by specifically setting targets for getting more women into STEM.

Every year Costa Rica publishes a report on how it’s meeting the targets. «That’s only possible if you’re setting those indicators in the first place,» said Woodhouse. It’s an example of how creating systems of accountability can be best practice.

Internet access beyond the binary

The Web Foundation’s research on gender has focused on traditional male-female lines and doesn’t incorporate the experiences of trans or nonbinary citizens. The «crucial problem» with expanding the research, Woodhouse said, is data availability. Even getting data that’s been broken down enough to show the discrepancy between the experience of cisgender men and women (people whose personal identity and gender correspond with their birth sex) has been challenging, he added.

«To then get data that is disaggregated even more comprehensively, is essentially nonexistent in most contexts, and particularly in the economic context we’re looking at of low- and middle-income countries,» he said. In some countries, being transgender is illegal and punishable by jail time or other serious measures, making the tracking of different genders impossible.

The lack of data is something Woodhouse hopes will change. But, he added, the overall goal of the research remains the same.

The aim is that we will «see less of the idea that gender should predetermine what rights someone should have, what kind of experiences they should have, what kind of access to the internet,» Woodhouse said. «That’s going to be a net benefit for everyone.»

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Dec. 9, #1634

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Dec. 9, No. 1,634.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a little tricky. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with S.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with E.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to being insulting or derogatory.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is SNIDE.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Dec. 8, No. 1633 was GRAVY.

Recent Wordle answers

Dec. 4, No. 1629: TULIP

Dec. 5, No. 1630: AMONG

Dec. 6, No. 1631: WAIST

Dec. 7, No. 1632: FLUTE

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, Dec. 9

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 9.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s a tough one today, and might take longer than usual. Read on for the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Apt profession for someone named Rosemary or Ginger
Answer: CHEF

5A clue: Get to go, as leftovers
Answer: BOXUP

7A clue: Word that can precede Bowl or Glue
Answer: SUPER

8A clue: Intense anger
Answer: RAGE

9A clue: «Cut that out!»
Answer: STOP

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Stephen Colbert’s network
Answer: CBS

2D clue: Noted group of 24
Answer: HOURS

3D clue: One living abroad, informally
Answer: EXPAT

4D clue: Spanish for «fire»
Answer: FUEGO

6D clue: Do some kitchen work
Answer: PREP

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Technologies

AI Saves Workers Less Than an Hour Each Day, New OpenAI Report Shows

AI adoption is rapidly expanding across industries, but workers are saving only 40 to 60 minutes per day, on average.

OpenAI’s 2025 ‘The State of Enterprise AI’ report provides an in-depth look at how businesses are using AI tools within real companies. Drawing on anonymized usage data from more than 1 million business customers, along with a survey of 9,000 workers at nearly 100 organizations, the report presents a picture of increased AI adoption and integration in the workplace.

«Across surveyed enterprises, 75% of workers report that using AI at work has improved either the speed or quality of their output,» the report states. Also, the report says that «75% of users report being able to complete new tasks they previously could not perform.»

However, the productivity gains might not be as universal and widespread as anticipated: on average, ChatGPT Enterprise users save less than an hour of time per day, according to the report.

Below is a breakdown of the report’s major findings.

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Report shows productivity gains, but it’s not universal

Despite the hype surrounding AI at work, the latest data from OpenAI suggests that the reality for most employees is modest. In its report, the company says that on average, ChatGPT Enterprise users save only about 40 to 60 minutes per active workday.

That’s not nothing, but it’s nowhere near the sweeping productivity overhaul that many hoped for. In a workday filled with meetings, emails and tool overload, an hour reclaimed can feel like a minimal benefit rather than a tidal shift in productivity.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

A few key findings

The report finds AI adoption within companies is growing fast. Weekly messages in ChatGPT Enterprise have increased nearly eightfold in the past year, and the use of structured workflows, such as custom GPTs, has risen 19 times. Companies are pushing more complex prompts, too, with reasoning-token usage increasing more than 320-fold.

But the outcomes don’t scale at the same rate. Workers say they complete certain tasks more quickly — like IT troubleshooting, campaign creation and coding improvements — yet the day-to-day gains still add up to roughly an hour on average.

A divide between heavy AI users and everyone else

OpenAI’s data shows a widening gap between «frontier» users — defined by OpenAI as those in the 95th percentile of adoption intensity — and the average worker, however.

Frontier employees send about six times more messages than average users. Unsurprisingly, these heavy users report bigger gains of over 10 hours a week. They build workflows around AI, automate routine tasks and turn the tool into a dependable co-worker instead of an occasional assistant. Though arguably, around 2 hours per day of saved time is still relatively moderate.

OpenAI frames the report as a snapshot of where enterprise AI stands today, rather than a final verdict. The company suggests that future gains could come not from the model itself, but from how organizations reshape processes and workflows around it.

But for most workers, AI is still a sidekick. Useful, but not transformative. It helps speed things up. It may even make some work less tedious. But the typical worker saving under an hour a day points to a technology that is powerful, yet still limited. The big question now is whether those numbers will keep climbing, or whether an hour a day is closer to the ceiling than AI enthusiasts want to admit.