Social networking is key to women’s experience with the Internet, according to comScore’s report, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet. Women spend 39% more time on social networks online than men do.

comScore studied the “Mars versus Venus” differences between men and women online, discovering that gender stereotypes only go so far. The chart shows the differences between women and men and their e-retail relationships. In stereotypical “men” categories of computer hardware and software, and sports/outdoor, for example, men and women aren’t all that different — only a couple of percentage points difference at most for these categories.

Health has one of largest overall differentials between men and women — a difference that increases with age. comScore found that among users 55 and up there is a 10 point diference in reach and usage of health sites online. More women ‘do’ health online and spend more time across every age cohort from 15-24 to 55+.

Thus, women index higher for health information online than men, with an index for percent reach of 132 (meaning that women are 32% more intense health information users than men). In retail health care, women are a bit more dominant than men, with 6.2% reach for women vs. 4.8% for men.

Rememeber, comScore says, that “Divas drive the dollars.” Women are the key drivers of online buyer across most categories, and collectively spend more online than men do. Women make up under half of the Internet population, but spend 58% of e-commerce dollars, comScore found.

More women are also getting into online gaming, especially for casual games — solitaire, card and board games are finding favor with women online.

Health Populi’s Hot Points: Health is an area where Mars and Venus plays out – women drive health decisions in the home, and access health information more intensely than men do. Organizations that deal with health and want to health-message and influence health choices, take note: be where women are online, especially via social platforms. Furthermore, exploit the fact that women like games online and experiment with this engaging format for health.