Women Entrepreneur's Hold the Keys to the Web 2.0 World

It seems that women due truly rule the world, or at least the Web 2.0 world.

A host of new surveys out from Hitwise, eMarketer, and Nielsen Online show that, more and more, women are more active on the 'net than their male counterparts. 

In it's 2007 survey, eMarketer predicted that there would be 97.2 million U.S. female Internet users aged 3 and older, or 51.7 percent of the total online population.

In addition, research commissioned by insurance group AXA found that 34% of new and expectant women were planning "to set up their own business from home……to use the web and email to carry on offering professional skills like accountancy on a consultancy basis."

There are a number of women entrepreneur's who have already hit it big online.  Take Net-a-Porter's founder Natalie Massenet, or Julia Reynolds, the women responsible for transforming Tesco's clothing operation.  But just ask any of them, and they'll tell you it wasn't easy.

Why? Because there is still a stigma that comes with being a female business owner.  As such, funding and investors are often difficult to find.  But that needs to change.

With statistics showing that the female population is all over the Internet, the next two decades will undoubtedly be filled with many success stories of online business; and those successes will be female driven.

In my opinion, investors and banks need to get behind the female business owners.  There is strength in numbers, and many successful online operations could force a major swing in the economy, both domestically and internationally.

It's no longer "the old boys club." These are the days of the "dotcom divas."