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Where did all the
E-women go?
Carol Dukes would have to disagree. She has worked in Internet publishing since 1994, has been managing director of EMAP online and Carlton online, and before that in satellite and cable - the new media of its time. 'If you look at the actual numbers of women doing start-ups, there are very few of us - maybe three out of 100 companies'. Dukes thinks the dot.com fever produced a 'disproportionate amount of hype' about women going further faster. 'And is it all healthy? We are still treated like a freak show: "Check it out! It's a woman running an Internet company!" There are women opening hairdressing salons, shops and PR agencies and nobody turns a hair'. Dukes, who keeps a 50:50 gender balance at ThinkNatural, is also highly sceptical about the romanticised idea of new media businesses that are run by women being characterised by a more modern 'feminised' approach. 'The demands of any media business are that it will be cut throat, creative and highly competitive,' she says.
The love affair between women and technology, as promoted by the likes of IBM, AOL and Sony, is wearing thin. Far from easing women's burden, many at e-women now find that technology complicates their lives. According to Bullock, 'The work-life balance is more difficult now that boundaries are blurred. Some of our members feel the net just adds to their stress levels and daily work. They just never switch off.'
At an executive level, Sonia Lo finds switching off almost impossible. She works an 80-hour week and the fundraising trail takes her abroad three times a week: 'It's not great for my personal life. I need three weeks warning to take an evening off to go to a cultural event'. She meets men all the time but 'they either work for me, are funding me or they're non-starters'. And yes the biological issue is apparent as she's now reaching her mid-thirties. 'Twenty-five to forty-five are your wealth creation years which squarely overlap with our reproduction years. You make a hard lifestyle choice.'
Next page: how to make it work
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