Nepal, Oct. 6 -- 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 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 P...