Women are just 31 per cent of Internet users - and in Europe the percentage is only half that. But their numbers are increasing at every mouse click in this age when the World Wide Web has begun to lose its nerdiness and shed the techie stigmatisms of the geek male preserve.
There's even a Geekgirl Web site (www.geekgirl.com), which describes geeks as people who;
check their e-mail on their way back to bed after a night-time trip to the bathroom;
have six computer books more than three inches thick;
and geek males usually have more than five webmistresses or girlfriends that they've never laid eyes on.
But what are the differences between male and female Internet users? Men are more likely to complain about speed and organising information on the Net, while women mention broken links and problems finding information, according to a major survey of users conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology last June.
If cyberspace is "where you are when you are on the phone", there are considerable differences between adult men and women in terms of telephone usage, according to Telecom Eireann. Women see the telephone as a hugely important item in their lives, both for personal contact and business reasons. Men tend to use it for specific reasons - for example, a family call to others abroad or to obtain information.
"Women are more psychologically comfortable with telephone usage of a social nature than men. However, these gender differences may be less real or marked among young men as they have grown up with the telephone and are more impulsive driven and able to `chat'," according to a Telecom spokesperson.
Does telephone usage have parallel links with Internet usage? Research by http://www.femina.com found that one third of women on the Web use it for research purposes, a further third use it specifically for e-mail, and just 1 per cent shop online. This indicates that female users are not much different from male surfers - they want dependable search engines, quality content and reliable information.
One lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, blames the low percentage of women online on the Irish school system. "Female students are not encouraged to do honours maths in schools," says Marie Redmond, who set up TCD's Multimedia Lab just over a year ago.
"But if they do take maths, they do extraordinarily better than men. Women are pushed into arts and social science. And in fact women score higher in computer-related subjects than men, but technology is an area where women haven't got fully involved yet and the sad fact is the statistics are still against them," says Redmond, who has been lecturing in computer science for the past 20 years. Various UK studies show that six times as many boys as girls have computers bought for them, according to Helen Fallon, author of Women On The Web (available from UCD's Women's Research Centre). As owners they are much more likely to use PCs in the home environment than girls. The research also shows that female students in Britain have lower levels of experience with computers compared with males.
A straw poll of eight Irish secondary schools (four male, four female) revealed that all the boys' schools offered computer courses to pupils compared with only one of the girls' schools.
Carol O'Sullivan, a computer graphics lecturer at UCD, says: "Women use the Internet to contact people but it is still very male dominated and it's usually men who provide the resources. But women do have a certain disadvantage as they are less exposed to games and graphics. When lecturing, I find that females can get intimidated at first, but do as well if not better than men, especially with the technical aspect."
Regarding e-mail-based discussion lists, however, there are notable gender differences.
"Messages posted by men tend to be roughly twice the length of those by women. Three-quarters of the messages by men use an adversarial style, distancing themselves from other participants, and often ridicule the contributions of others while promoting their own importance and knowledge," according to a survey by Susan Herring in Women On The Web.
"Women who participate tend to ask questions and their communicative style is both interactive and supportive and they are much more likely to reveal thoughts and feelings." "A lot of women who are taking a career break are hugely enthusiastic. With the Internet it used to be just techie and anorak heads but now that's all changed," says Ciara Ruschitzko of Computer Access, the Dublinbased computer training company and Internet consultancy. "There's a huge amount of women participating and they see it as a tool for many purposes. We do a lot of advanced Internet training and we certainly have as many women creating Web pages as men."
Ann Riordan, Country Business Manager of Microsoft Ireland, says: "I don't see the use of the Internet as a gender issue - more as a function of how hungry a person is for information. Today, primary school children and university students working on science and climatology projects can access the same weather report and statistics as space engineers at the Kennedy Space Centre. In essence, this is what it's all about - information at your fingertips."
Alexa Coyne of the Cyberia Cafe in the Arthouse multimedia centre in Dublin's Temple Bar, says: "Women come in to research for their professional work and are mostly quite focused, whereas men in general come in to surf. During the day we have two thirds men and one third women but the female customer has increased enormously, particularly since last April. However, it is obvious that online interactive games do not have the same appeal for women as for men."
Ziauddin Sardar and Jerome R. Ravotz argue in their book Cyberfutures: "Most video games are designed with a very white, Western male view of what children find interesting: killing, shooting and blowing things up. In games like Mortal Kombat and Comanche Maximum Overkill, which contains horrific scenes of violence, the object is simply to kill or hunt your opponent. Doom and its various sequels involve nothing more than relentless killing.
"The women in these games are either cyberbimbos, electronic renderings of Barbie dolls, or are as psychotic as the male characters. At worst, women are absent from these narratives, at best they are there to be rescued from evil villains as in Prince Of Persia and its sequel."
Then there are those sexy advertisements selling PCs that target males with a blonde beauty dressed in a tight top and hot pants, clutching a CPU to her breast. The caption reads: "Subscribe today and you could have this little beauty sitting on your desk next month." On the other hand, research by Avon Products found that most women surveyed saw technology as a way to break into traditionally male-dominated fields, and other females attributed recent advancement at work to how well they used technology.
The trek for women may take more time, but at least now they can compete in the race to the end of the cyber frontier. It's one step at a time.