Cyberspace: no women need apply? Librarians and the Internet

The Internet has the potential to break down or ameliorate gender-based barriers to communication, mentoring, travel and discourse. The author reviews the potential inherent in a recent sampling of traffic on FEMINIST, an ALA feminist Internet discussion group, and PACS-L, a large general discussion group on professional issues run from MIT, and a survey of librarians and their use of the Internet undertaken in 1995. She found there were marked differences in both the content and tone of messages posted by male and female participants and that the Internet had the capacity to broaden opportunities for mutual support to women who for various reasons (some of them gender-related) lacked the resources to travel in person.