ho says it's a man's world? Not New Yorker Aliza Sherman, who is working to boost the number of women tuned in and turned on to the Internet. Aliza created a personal home page, Cybergrrl, back in the early days of the World Wide Web land grab. More recently she founded Webgrrls, a loosely knit organization of women in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The group provides a forum for women to exchange job and business leads, connect interns with mentors, and share creative and technical Web-building tips. As part of an increasingly common trend, many of these women are making the effort to meet face-to-face, further strengthening bonds initially formed online.Webgrrls is not daunted by demographics, which show that fewer than one-fourth of the world's Internet users are women. One way the group is improving the numbers is Team Webgrrls, "a community project where we set up meetings with young girls and help them learn about the Internet," says twenty-something Aliza. Team Webgrrls students include Girl Scouts from Harlem working hard on their -- yes -- Internet badges. "The connections women are making at Webgrrls are incredible," says Aliza. "One woman will say, 'I need a writer for my company's Web project' and another will say, 'I'm looking to write for the Internet.' I've never seen anything like it." Aliza has also created FeMiNa, a searchable Web directory with pointers to sites of interest -- "like Yahoo with a decidedly grrl attitude," she says with a grin.
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