By Elizabeth Corcoran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 8, 1999; Page F19

Conjure up a picture of the "typical Internet user" and what do you see? Probably a slightly disheveled guy, with a programmer's paunch and glasses, munching on pizza as he leans over his keyboard?

Try again. This year for the first time, the number of women using online services is likely to match the number of men online, a new survey predicts. The number of women online "has really surged in the past year alone," said Frank Gens, a senior vice president at International Data Group, a market research firm in Framingham, Mass.

Just four years ago, "it was pretty much a male Internet," Gens said. But by late 1997, about 43 percent of the people online were women, according to Gens's research. That number jumped to 48 percent by the end of last year and will probably exceed 50 percent in 1999, she has concluded.

Already, more than half of America Online's members are women. "Our membership is 51 percent women, 49 percent male, mirroring the population," said Pam McGraw, a spokeswoman for AOL.

There's no question that the technology for getting online and finding information has improved dramatically since 1994 and the early days of the World Wide Web. And there's far more to do online once you get there. "As the Internet moves from being a curiosity to a tool that you can use to save time, it becomes more appealing, particularly to women who are stretched for time as they balance work and home," Gens said.

According to Gens, women spend less time per week online than do men: about 7.5 hours a week, compared with nine hours for their male counterparts. "Women aren't into just surfing the hours away," Gens said. Instead, they tend to go onto the Internet with a specific goal in mind, get it done and get off.

There are also subtle differences between what men and women like to do online. Almost everyone uses the Internet to send electronic mail, but women even more so than men. According to Nick Donatiello, president of Odyssey, a market research firm in San Francisco, 91 percent of women online use e-mail, compared with 83 percent of men.

That figure jibes with the experience of Camilla Chavez, a graduate student at Catholic University in the District. "I personally can't imagine not having e-mail," said Chavez, who first started using online services in college about six years ago.

Her whole family, including relatives in the Philippines, now uses electronic mail to stay in touch. Both her parents, who live in California, rely on e-mail. But, she conceded, "I probably get more e-mail from my mom -- she just likes to write more."

As more health services have come online, women have flocked to those sites as well. Donatiello's numbers indicate that about 56 percent of the people frequenting Web sites on health issues are women. Although there is some interest in finding answers to routine health questions, the sites that have really struck a deep chord with women are those devoted to rare illnesses.

Bendette Hardwick, a mother in Oklahoma, just started using the Internet last October when she was trying to find out more information about problems that plagued her young son. "We were trying to find other parents who had children with the same problems," she said. And soon after she began browsing the Internet, she hit pay dirt: sites and discussion groups devoted to the problems that her son had had, with recommendations about the kinds of tests that she and her husband should have done.

Although her husband has used the Internet as well, Hardwick has become the online goddess in their home. These days, she can spend as much as seven hours in a day online if she's seeking answers to a particular question, or just an hour or so if she's sending messages to some of the chat groups that she has joined. "You start making a lot of friends online and you want to see how they're doing," she said.

As the number of men and women online evens out, worrying about gender differences becomes less important to people trying to attract more users to their sites, Donatiello said. "I think it's downright offensive the way people in the industry make assumptions about gender as opposed to more fundamental attitudes," he said. "A woman who is interested in outdoor activities and has an active lifestyle is much more like a man who has an outdoor lifestyle than she is like a woman who is into quilting," he said.

Eno Jackson, who created a pioneering site for women of African American descent about five years ago on the Web, said she believes that Internet technology is becoming more democratic. "A lot more people have access to information now than they did 10 years ago" when she signed up for her first online account. "Back then, you had to be educated, know something about computers." Now she added, all it takes is a credit card and a computer, a device that has dropped in price by half over that time.

Now there are far more communities to join online, Jackson noted, including many that are almost exclusively dominated by women. "That just didn't exist 10 years ago," she added.

Even so, women are still well advised to be cautious, even when taking part in discussion groups that cater to women. "Don't give out personal information, like saying 'I live here,' " Hardwick warned.

But do get online, urged Chavez. "It takes a bit of patience, but it's not hard. Just do it!"

Fifty-Fifty

Ease of use and the inherent practicality of the World Wide Web are squashing gender stereotypes. The number of women online in 1999 is likely to match the number of men, according to a market research firm's data:

People online

1993

Men 57%

Women 43%

People online*

1999

Men 50%

Women 50%

*Projected

Hours online per week

Women 7.5 hours

Men 9.0 Hours

SOURCE: International Data Group, Framingham, Mass.