CMC Magazine / March 1, 1996
	THE LAST LINK A Loan by John December Tori Amos sheds the pure, white dress from her CD Under the Pink and now situates herself in alien territory. In the song "Caught a Lite Sneeze" from her latest CD, Boys for Pele, she sings: boys on my left side boys on my right side boys in the middle Women on the Web might feel this same way: An October 1995 survey by a team from the Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing found that 70.7% of Web users responding to the survey were male. [ Shade comments on Web demographics] That proportion of women Web users is not unlike other proportions in "real life:" the school I attend, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute enrolls approximately that same minority proportion of women, sharing a similar gender imbalance as most technological and engineering schools. And women's representation in other areas--from the U. S. Senate and to corporate and academic leadership positions--is even more disproportionate considering women's status as the majority gender on earth. But why has the World Wide Web--right from its outset, replicated this gender imbalance? John December (john@december.com) studies and writes about the online world. Copyright © 1996 by John December. All Rights Reserved.
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