On the face of it, the new economy looks like a nirvana for women. The skills required for success are cerebral (ideas generation, IT knowledge) or semi-social (networking, team-building). And the entrepreneurial spirit required to jump the "not com" old economy corporate ship and establish a start-up seems to reside in the X chromosome: US women are in the forefront of new business creation and British women are not far behind.
The technological slaying of distance, with websites and email allowing new economy recruits to work as and where they please, is particularly helpful to women trying to marry paid work with childcare. Throw in some glamour in the shape of Martha Lane Fox and the feminisation of the new economy seems complete. Women sick of banging their heads against the glass ceilings of the old economy can give it up as a bad job and join the flexible, gender-neutral new one instead.
Except things aren't quite as they seem. The surface impression of a new dawn of gender equality does not fit with the reality of the changing economy. Helen Wilkinson, a writer on gender and technology, argues that a harsher dot.com environment means women are struggling to establish themselves in start-ups. "The new economy looks good for women on paper - technology allows new ways of working, creating the potential for better work-life balance," she says. "But start-ups require a huge initial investment of time and energy, meaning long working hours. The dot.com culture is still quite male-oriented and in a climate in which investors are cautious, there is a tendency to go with safe options."
Wilkinson points out that the venture capital firms backing dot.com start-ups are dominated by men; the specific IT skills required for website building and e-commerce are still being acquired by more men than women - indeed the number of women applying to study IT has dropped slightly. And while the image of the new economy worker logging on from home seems attractive, the truth is less futuristic: a study by the Institute for Employment Studies found that women telecommuters were three times more likely than men to be interrupted by children.
Perhaps most importantly, the working culture of dot.coms is more macho than the old economy, with the possible exception of City trading rooms. Start-ups operate in a go-go, flat-out climate and the line between success and failure is often so narrow - and the gains from stocks options so great - that working all the hours God sends is entirely rational. Far from prefiguring a feminine future, dot.commery is fuelled by testosterone and takeaways, with friends and lovers found in the late-night office and "start-up sex" made more exciting by the shared sense of pace and risk in many e-ventures.
In the US, there are signs of a backlash against start-up craziness. The initiatives to reduce pressure on employees speak volumes about the levels of insanity. Justin Kitch, founder of Homestead.com, decided to rebalance his life when he got married, cutting back his office hours to just 60 and putting in, on top, a mere 20 at home. Charlie Kim, head of Next Jump, which produces online college guides, told Fast Company magazine he was cracking down on long hours by banning sleeping in the office and removing all beds and futons.
On this side of the pond, too, the atmosphere of dot.coms remains relentlessly macho. Employees boast of pulling "all-nighters" - an activity once reserved for just-in-time essay production at university.
Of course, it is not just men who are adopting a work-all-hours approach - Lane Fox herself rises at dawn, rushes around until dusk and puts in more work in between than most of us manage in a week. Which is fine until children appear on the scene because women still have most of the childcare responsibilities and the dot.com culture is about as family-unfriendly as you can get.
Without relinquishing their command of the old economy, men are colonising the new one, too. Far from narrowing the gap between men and women, the rise of the dot.com is in danger of widening it. So much for e-quality.
• Richard Reeves is director of futures at the Industrial Society. You can contact him at rreeves@indsoc.co.uk.
