Of the UK's 10m+ Internet users, just under 39% are women - and that figure hasn't changed much in the past four years.

In the United States, however, according to a poll by Media Metrix, published in Wired magazine, the gender gap in Internet use has closed. As of January, half of US adult users were female.

Worldwide, the number of women on the Internet is growing faster than the number of men, according to research by the CommerceNet and Neilson Media Research.

But despite all this, the Web is still what one writer described as "an arid, masculine desert".

Girls aren't turned off by shooting and violence - they just think it's boring

Currently, there's no real way of grading the content of every page on every site the Web contains, so no firm way of establishing just how many sites are feminine or masculine in content.

Incore - Internet Content Rating for Europe - is a project funded by the European Commission which aims to come up with a generic system to grade and filter the whole of the Web.

Its primary concerns are pornography, particularly involving children, but the Internet Service Providers Association says the information that such a system may throw up could also be a hugely important marketing tool.

While America Online - the world's largest online provider - chose to target its subscription-free service at "lads", marketing executives in other areas of the industry are scratching their heads about how to make feminine-friendly products.

Women now account for 38% of people shopping online - up from 29% over the last two years.

It has long been recognised that the games industry sells most of its products to boys and men.

At first it was thought that girls simply weren't any good at computer games. But then research in the United States started to indicate that girls weren't inept - just bored.

Boys can spend hours a week playing computer games

While teenage and preteen girls, by and large, were not the least bit interested in computer games, their male counterparts spent at least six hours a week playing them.

There have been a few attempts to generate games for girls - the most successful being a range of Barbie adventures.

Another American company which set out to tap into what interested girls and young women was Purple Moon.

It created whole schoolroom and tree house environments where the game consisted of chatting to friends about teenage issues.

The games part of the company recently folded - but it still has a Website. Company spokeswoman Karen Gould told reporters: "Girls said it wasn't so much that computer games were violent, but that they were boring.

"They wanted adventures involving lifelike characters that were as real as the friends they had at school. They wanted complete plots they could immerse themselves in, and they found having an experience more meaningful than having a high score."

More recent "girl power" successes have involved The Spice Girls game, and to a much greater extent, the old tomb raider herself, Lara Croft.

Although, of course, Lara is still a shoot-'em-up girl, criticised by some feminists for being an idealised, and controllable, image of a woman.

Boys toys ...

One UK manufacturer has plans for an ice-skating game, where young girls will be able to choreograph manoeuvres on the rink. And there is a strong will within the industry to make games that will sell to girls and women.

"I think PCs are still perceived as being a male domain. They are boys' toys, and that is probably true of computer games as well," said Robert Lawson of National Opinion Polls.

"There is also a separate issue that the majority of content is masculine - although new women users are surprised by how much content is of interest to them."

Mostly in the US - where peer pressure has traditionally persuaded girls to avoid maths, science and computing at school - there has been something of a backlash against the "girl geek" image.

Increasing numbers of American e-zines are dedicated to "Grrlllzz" and "Gurlz". "Feminism is reborn on the Web" shouts one.