What Women Really Want on the Web

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Women now have the tools and the capability on the Net to improve the future for women everywhere, to build businesses, expand markets, tap into global customer pools, receive competitive bids in real time. It is simply up to women to become proactive, to say " Leave the soap operas to TV, we want to get on the Net and change the world."

Even though it seems the Internet has entered our lives like a train roaring through our living rooms, women should realize we are only on the threshold of this new networked world. Like the early days of cable TV, when everything was formative, no one knows precisely what Net will become. There is still the opportunity to shape what we want the Net to be.

The question is, what do you really want the Internet to be?

As Business Week recently pointed out and MSNBC also noted, the three largest women's sites, are disappointingly like women's magazines and similar to each other: a few recipes, some fashion, astrology, several money managing tips.

(See: Airheads and What Real Women Want).

Is this really what women want?

Or is the Net too critical an opportunity to dissipate with feather weight fare? After all, cyberspace is not only where the future of commerce, entertainment and education are headed, it is where new communities are being formed which will shape the future in each of those areas. A broad range of issues are at the center of the Internet and information revolution; questions such as who gets the best education and distribution of wealth and power will be ultimately settled on the Internet.

And even as the Net evolves into broad band, where it will become more like TV, it is important to remember there are great differences between the Net and TV . The Net is not a passive experience in which you are fed news or entertainment; the Net is an interactive medium which encourages participation and response and features two way communication, forums, group discussions, debate, voting and now, B2B electronic commerce where the whole world is your marketplace. You can get on the Net and, by participating, help shape it into what you want it to be.

So, the choice, ultimately is yours; you can decide if you want the Net to be a place with electronic billboards and catalogs, soap operas and sites solely about what this or that movie star said or did, or selling vitamins and cosmetics. Or you can choose to harness the power of the Net to make progress for women.

Just as there is a gap for women in the workplace, and a gap between what women business owners earn as compared with what men business owners earn. there is an increasing gap between the information, resources and tools available on the Net for the older, established companies and the new, entrepreneurial companies, most of which have been started by women.

In a recent policy forum in Washington D.C. on Women in the Americas, the government's leadership said that research had proven, if you want to help a country, first help the women; second, help the women build a business. Sometimes even a loan as small as $50 in Latin America had allowed a woman to buy a sewing machine and from there sprang a business that eventually supported many.

Women in the U.S. are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. It is critical that women have access to the same kinds of cutting edge Internet tools and resources that big business and WASP networks have access to. It is equally important that a meaningful part of the content, as well as the tools and resources on the Net be fully inclusive and representative of women, that it be shaped and produced by women and offer new paradigms to support women. To advance in their business or careers, women need their own networks to do business, share information and strategies and to mentor each other, so the pipeline is always full of qualified, well trained women, on the fast track to success.

So who will lead women's charge to make the Net as friendly to women, and as much an instrument of power to us as it is to techies and teenagers? Perhaps it should be each of us. The Internet is very much like democracy in that, even if you are entitled to vote, you must still get out and do it yourself. You can't assign it and you can't delegate it .. You must do it yourself.

Women now have the tools and the capability on the Net to improve the future for women everywhere, to build businesses, expand markets, tap into global customer pools, receive competitive bids in real time. It is simply up to women to become proactive, to say " Leave the soap operas to TV, we want to get on the Net and change the world. We want to get on the Net and do business globally, make a profit and get our fair share of the rewards. We want the playing field to be level and, at last, the Net has given us the means to level it."