Traditionally, women have lagged behind men in the adoption of Internet-based technologies, but a recent study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that women below the age of 30 have outpowered men in Internet usage.

The Washington-based organization, which has been conducting surveys on different aspects of technology and Internet usage for several years, has demystified the disparity across age groups. The report found that 86% of women between 18-29 were online, compared to 80% of men in the same age group.

Back home, according to an IAMAI-IMRB survey, March 2008 saw 43 mn active users online. It also revealed that 38% of Indian Internet users (14 mn) spent an average of eight hours per week online. While working women spent an average of 535 minutes a week on the Internet, non-working women spent 334 minutes a week.

The urban woman is surely giving stiff competition to her rural counterpart and vice versaonline. Web 2.0s final frontier, before it morphs itself into Mobile 2.0 or something else, seems to be luring the independent Indian woman to embracing the power of the Internet, to connect with one another. Ladies-only networking sites are suddenly gaining mass acceptance and online gaming sites are dedicating separate sections for women. We even came across a site dedicated to women jamming up and planning foreign holidays together.

Home Networking
www.sitagita.com
According to Nirmal Mirza, CEO of Sitagita.com, a ladies-only networking site which has been around for more than eight years, women from all over the country are doing small but significant businesses from home, and her website hopes to connect all of them. She explains: Every working woman goes through a stage in her life when she takes an extended maternity leave, when she keeps off work and embarks on her hobbies seriously. These hobbies could be anything: jewelry designing, saree patterns, or interior decoration.

Sitagita.com has created an extensive business directory in order to connect them with each other. In other words, it is both a B2B and B2C site dedicated to women. The sites Womens Home Business Directory has categories like beauty, food and entertainment, flowers, health, music/dance, and tuitions. Each section has a huge number of listings from women who post their profiles, contact details, and brief descriptions of nature of work. Suppose there is a saree designer in Salem, and a woman in Mumbai wants to purchase her designs, this forum will help them connect with each other. In the course of time, with broadband connectivity becoming widespread, Sitagita hopes to cater more to the rural market, since we feel the real motto of the websiteempowering women through the Webwill be realized there, says Mirza.

All-women Getaways
www.wowsumitra.com
Sumitra Senapatys WOW Club, which stands for Women on Wanderlust, is probably Indias first travel site for women. Sumitra, a travel enthusiast, embarked on the idea of WOW when she was holidaying in Kerala with her extended family. As a strange coincidence, each and every male member of the family happened to drop out of the trip, leaving about a dozen women alone. We went ahead as planned, and were quite surprised to find out that though our age group ranged between 16-60, we still had common topics to talk about. This is when the idea of WOW dawned on me, says Sumitra.

WOW members have traveled to locations like Egypt, South Africa, China, and Ladakh. The site features photos and blogs of WOW travails besides the tour calendar for the next year. All one needs to do to become a member is register herself with the website. Sumitra says, In todays age, a woman need not always travel with her spouse or family. The new age woman, who works hard through the day and takes on the role of a wife or daughter post work, deserves a break once in a while. This is the sentiment behind WOW.

Play Your Games
www.zapak.com/zapakgirls
Zapak, the countrys first online gaming portal, recently announced an impressive chunk of space for Zapak Girls, a section dedicated to young women who have a passion for massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), including strategy games, arcade games, even select war games, and puzzle games.

Zapak has created exclusive content for this sectionvirtual casinos, cooking-based games, home management games, besides a regular dose of popular Indian and international titles that are updated every week. The Indian lineup is quite impressive too, with comic games like Akhiyon Se Goli Maare, a game where you device strategies to deal with goonda-mawalis who tease you as you travel along the cyber highway. Another example is the woman against man or woman against woman Panja games where the strongest elbow wins.

In order to complete the girlie experience, the site also features an offer by a cosmetic brand that helps you replicate Deepika Padukones Om Shanti Om look.

Gang Up
www.sunsilkgangofgirls.com
Initially, this website comes across as a desperate attempt by a shampoo manufacturer to appeal to the teenybopper audience using the Internet, but a serious evaluation of the portal makes us realize that it is one of the very few that have taken women seriously. It features things like women-only blogs, in-house job portal exclusively for women, and discussion forums on home improvement, adventure sports, and relationship management.

Men, however, are restricted to only viewing the pages. They cannot participate in discussions, cant even access the blog section, and to make matters worse, if one logs in as a male, he is automatically classified as a desperate man.

The rather exhaustive job section streamlines job offerings into easy sections like tech, sales and marketing, and work-from-home, etc. The blogs are quite intense and serious, with topics ranging from global warming to relationships, marriage, and surprisingly, even dollar versus rupee trends.

Vishnu Anand
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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