By Gwen Harris
Gwen Harris Information Services
Information Consultant and Internet Specialist

Have you noticed, whenever the subject of women and the Internet comes up so does pornography, stalking and technophobia? "Will people know my address when I send an email message?", asked a friend. "I don't want to receive abusive mail." There is a view that the Internet is hostile to women, that it is dominated by men and their "frantic testosterone rich dialogs."⁽¹⁾ Why else would women stay off the Internet?

An article in the January 1996 NetGuide presents several other reasons2. That technology is not a "turn on" for women is a big one. Women, it is said, just want to get into their "reliable station wagons", get to the store and get home or in online parlance, "get on and get off." The social culture renders women technophobic: they don't like mathematics or computers. These are the reasons given when people try to explain why there are so few women on the Internet. "Sometimes it seems there are about as many women online as you'd find in a Foreign Legion camp."⁽²⁾ Nielsen estimates one woman for every two men on the Internet (http://www.commerce.net/information/surveys/). This is up from two in 10 a year earlier. Simba has predicted that 35 to 40% of the Internet population will be women by the end of 1995, adding that "men are driven by professional, communications oriented applications while women lean toward personal applications, particularly real time chat and shopping" [reported in Webster, September 9, 1995].

Where might they have got this idea of real time chat and shopping? Stereotypical thinking never ceases.

Women are on the Internet creating sites, being the system operators of bulletin boards, forming electronic engineering and computer science communities. They are active in the many electronic library science communties, organizing and contributing information, and sometimes, simply being outrageous.

Jack Kapica featured "How women are finding a Net voice" in his Globe and Mail Cyberia column of November 10, 1995. Open http://www.globeandmail.ca/Editorial/Archives/Cyber 30.html to read the article and follow the hypertext links to the sites he mentions. This is an excellent starter list for finding women's sites.

For a complete guide you might wish to buy Julie Charles' Guide to Online Resources for Women on the Wire (subtitled a Modem is a Girl's Best Friend). This is one of the Point and Click series put out by Reed Books Canada (http://www.highwire.com). Available at many bookstores and priced at $14.99, this is a delightful combo of book and disk which describes and provides hot links to sites by and about women. It has some Canadian content certainly a rarety.

Canadian women have a way to go to match the chutzpah of the American. Check out Carla Sinclair, author of Net Chick, at http://www.cyborganic.com/People/Carla. She opens: "Loosen your bra straps, take a deep breath you're about to embark on themost sumptuous, estrogenic journey ever taken through online culture." Go there, read more it's worth it just to see a sample of this woman's online energy.

Since there are so many excellent starting points I will mention only a few. There are some very fine women's studies sites that you will find by starting from the meta sites. The track I followed on a snowy Saturday was to geek grrls with their saucy, confident manners and fast web site pens. Cybergrrl (http://www.cybergrrls.com/) must head the list as a meta directory. Aliza Sherman, creator of Cybergrrl in New York City, presents a hilarious, fast paced autobio that could inspire any teenage girl to seek a life on the Internet. Sherman is also the creator of FeMiNa (http://www.femina.com/) a subject directory with the focus on women. If you go here (and are female), you might like to respond to the survey so that in at least one place on the Internet there is a profile that takes you into account.

Amy Goodloe is another Net women (http://www.best.com/~agoodloe/women.html). Ms. Goodloe is a trainer and Web page designer in San Francisco. Her site has a women only policy and she manages several women only listservs. These are forums "where women can feel comfortable getting advice with various subjects and where they can exercise their technical skill in helping each other solve problems."

My favourite however was Web'sters' Network. "Webster", explained Jerome McDonough, the webmaster (yes, life is full of surprises), is a female weaver. This site (http://lucien.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU/women_in_it) presents a list of resources useful for women in the fields of library and information science, computer science, and information technology.

From there you may go to Women's Web Info Net (http://cyber active.com/wwin/) where you will find the top 10 women's sites. In November the top site was Andria Hunter's home page. Andria plays for the University of Toronto Varsity Blues hockey team while also studying in the graduate program in the Department of Computer Science.

No list of women's resources is complete without mention of Women's Wire. This is an electronic community in California created for women. It is accessible through the CompuServe network (a local call for many) at $9.95 US per month. It has a web site (http://www.women.com/) that carries daily news about women "hot off the wire", the Sylvia comic strip, columnists and an excellent page of links to other women's sites. The site is very well crafted.

In visiting these directory sites you will often see a link to geekgirl usually annotated as "wierd". Geekgirl (http://www.next.com.au/spyfood/geekgirl/) is a women oriented Australian e zine, outrageous and anarchic. If you need relief some evening from all that numbs check it out.

⁽¹⁾ Valauskas, Edward J. "Hassle Free Online Information and Internet Access" in Online, July/August 1995, p. 79 82.

⁽²⁾ Broadhurst, Judith. "Bridging the Gender Gap" in Netguide. January 1996, p. 85-88.

Copyright © 1996 SLA. All rights reserved.

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