When it comes to men befriending women on Facebook, Bhojpur is ahead of Bhutan. Parsa, meanwhile, sits at about India’s national level. 

A trove of new data from researchers at Meta and New York University shows that Nepalis are more gender-mixed online than most of South Asia, though how much depends heavily on where they live.

 The data, drawn from more than 1.3 trillion connections among more than 1.8 billion Facebook users worldwide, puts Nepal’s “cross-gender friending ratio” at 0.58. That means the share of women among Nepali men’s closest friends is about 60 percent of the share among Nepali women's closest friends. 

In South Asia, only Bhutan has a higher ratio of cross-gender Facebook friendships than Nepal. India and Pakistan are much lower.

Within Nepal, however, the rate of cross-gender friendship is higher in the eastern hills and Karnali than elsewhere. Bhojpur, which has the highest ratio of cross-gender friendship, ranks even higher than Bhutan, which has the highest ratio in South Asia. Parsa, where the ratio is the lowest, is around India’s national level.

Among Nepal’s provinces, cross-gender friendship is highest in Karnali and lowest in Madhesh.

According to the study, such indicators do not only show the extent of cross-gender friendship on facebook. They also reflect gender gap in labour-force participation and the level of gender inequality in society.

The data are based on 200 closest facebook friends of users aged 18 to 65.