Cross-Gender Social Ties around the World

We introduce, describe, and analyze subnational data on cross-gender friendships for nearly 200 countries and territories, using data from 1.38 trillion ties between 1.8 billion Facebook users. Homophily by gender exists nearly everywhere, with individuals' strongest ties exhibiting less homophily than their peripheral connections. Across countries, cross-gender friendship rates align with existing measures of gender disparities. Within a country, higher cross-gender friending rates correlate with greater support for equal treatment of men and women. In the United States, cross-gender friendships are less common in areas with a larger White population share, higher incomes, and more religious congregations per capita.