Mind the Gap, Not the Interface: Gendered Importance–Satisfaction Gaps in Educational Technology Services Among International Students in China

The digital transformation of higher education is central to sustainable and equitable international education, as reflected in Sustainable Development Goals 4, 5, and 10. Yet gender equity research in digital education has focused on access and technology acceptance, leaving unknown whether male and female international students differentially evaluate the educational technology services their host universities deliver. This study analyzed a cross-sectional survey of 329 international students in China (135 male, 194 female), who completed mirrored importance–satisfaction batteries for six educational technology services, online admission, diversified information access, timely website information, social media information, smart classrooms, and digital libraries, analyzed with Welch’s t-tests, effect sizes, paired tests, and HC3-robust regressions. Male students rated technology importance significantly higher than female students (4.46 vs. 4.29, p = 0.011, d = 0.278), while reported satisfaction was statistically indistinguishable between genders (p = 0.614, d = −0.057; 90% CI [−0.17, 0.09]), with equivalence supported at a moderate (d = ±0.3) but not a small (d = ±0.2) smallest effect size of interest. Consequently, male students exhibited a larger negative importance–satisfaction gap (−0.48 vs. −0.27, p = 0.016), concentrated in information-intermediated services. Controlling for region of origin and family income attenuated the male coefficient to non-significance, and further adjustment for study duration left this conclusion unchanged; although the gap persisted descriptively within the Asian subsample (p = 0.012), that persistence was itself attributable to country composition within Asia. Because importance and satisfaction were measured concurrently, the importance ratings are interpreted as retrospective evaluative anchors, proxies for, rather than direct observations of, pre-arrival expectations. Within this interpretive frame, the pattern is consistent with a gendered difference in attributed importance rather than reported satisfaction; expectation-related mechanisms remain hypotheses for longitudinal testing. The paper concludes with theoretical implications and managerial recommendations for universities and national policy makers, in the context of China’s national strategy of opening up education to the world: transparent pre-arrival information, realistic recruitment communication, and attention to comparatively lower-satisfaction services can support sustainable, gender-equitable digital education alongside interface quality.