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November 17  1998

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A question of sex

LET'S talk about sex. Compare the following statements:

* For the rest of the world (mostly Canada and Australia), females account for 30.5 per cent of respondents -- Georgia Tech 9th online survey, May 1998.
* There is a slow increase in the proportion of female Internet users, who make up less than 20 per cent of users -- www.consult survey of Australian Net use, July 1997.
* Approximately 29 per cent of males (1.9 million) 18 years and over had accessed the Internet in the 12 months to May 1998. The corresponding figure for females was 24 per cent (1.7 million) -- Australian Bureau of Statistics, August 1998. (These figures convert to a 53-47 male-female ratio.)

They all tell different stories of the sex ratio of Internet users. But which is accurate? Since the Net started becoming a popular medium in 1994-95, the assumption has been that it is testosterone-charged; dominated by 18-24-year-old men.

There is still deep distrust and fear that a medium dominated by young males can do no one much good. For example, the British consumer magazine, Which?, found recently that two-thirds of the 1000 people it questioned on attitudes to the Net believed it posed a threat to morality. Half of those surveyed feared the threat of Net fraud and a third believed the Internet to be a danger to national security. Of those who believed in the threat to morality, nearly 90 per cent thought that it provided easy access to pornography and 60 per cent saw no way of restricting children's access to such material.

I have not seen a similar survey of Australians, but would assume -- based on conversational evidence with non-users -- that results would be similar. The fears are not totally groundless, but appear to be exaggerated partly because of the sex ratio misconception.

A lot has changed in three and a half years as computer ownership and Net use has exploded. Indeed the Georgia Tech online survey -- one of the longest running in the young medium's history -- reported earlier this year: "For the first time, we see a category of users which has more females than males -- users who have been online for less than a year (51.7 per cent female, 48.3 per cent male)."

More food for thought comes from Peter Moulding, a Sydney information technology consultant, who recently made some astute observations on the sex ratio question in a posting to various newsgroups on the Net.

He claimed that lots of females used the Internet "either lurking or pretending to be male so they will not be harassed." Mr Moulding said his business received lots of e-mail from females using their husband's address. "They use the male name until they realise we are honest then drop the cover. Often the male who owns the Internet account never uses the account for anything other than work," he wrote. "Among my customers who use generic business names, the usage by females is in direct proportion to the percentage of office staff in that industry. We frequently send e-mail to company generic addresses. Often the reply is from an individual using their personal e-mail address. A high percentage are female."

Mr Moulding has issued the following challenge to readers: Go to his Web site at www.helpnet.com.au and pick the pages written by males and the pages written by females.

He argues that it should be almost impossible to tell.

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