Given recent headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the “feminisation of the internet” is happening mostly in the poster-hung bedrooms of teenage girls. The teen networking site Bebo has just been sold for £295m, almost a third of teen girls have their own website and the new online gaming sensation Miss Bimbo has caused a furore by encouraging 10-year-olds to trade Bimbo points for virtual boob jobs in their attempt to become the “hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo ever”.

There is, however, another group of girls setting out to make the internet their own, and they could not be less interested in online forums dedicated to locating the origins of Paris Hilton’s wedges. While the number of visitors to women’s websites rose by 35% last year, communities and political sites for older women were the fastest-growing categories of online activity. And, this month, these grown-ups have a new place to go.

Meet the Women on the Web – or the Wow O Wows – as they call themselves. Bored with what they brand the “village fête and peach-pie recipe” content of standard female-friendly websites, a group of America’s most successful and well-connected women has launched Wowowow.com, a website designed to give grown-up women the online content they have been looking for. Getting together for what must have been the ultimate power lunch, the founding members – Joni Evans, former president of Simon & Schuster, Peggy Noonan, a political columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Lesley Stahl, a journalist on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Liz Smith, the famous gossip columnist, and Mary Wells, advertising supremo and first-ever female CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange – put their oversized brains together, opened their bulging address books and came up with the answer to their internet dreams.

“The web is a brash, youthful thing – and there isn’t anything on it for mature women,” Smith says. Their interests are, according to Stahl, about “looking for something more than just a place to shop or find a mate”. Female-friendly websites such as iVillage and Mumsnet have been hugely successful, but they don’t necessarily serve the needs of older educated women – women who like to read both DailyCandy and The Huffington Post, but are defined by neither.

“I think it’s the most exciting idea I’ve come across,” says Joan Juliet Buck, a former editor at British Vogue and subsequently editor of French Vogue, who was brought in as a consulting editor. “For a long time, I’ve been wanting to start something for my generation as it ages. Our concerns are as much to do with business, politics, culture and human interaction as they are with: ‘Where the hell do you get your hair dyed?’. Nobody is just a granny.”

Judging by the content and the responses the site displays, she is not alone. Daily questions are posted, ranging from “Should Silda Spitzer stand by her man?” through “Do you believe in global warming?” to “Where are you putting your money? Stocks? Bonds? Real estate? Or under the mattress?”. There are online polls asking readers which beauty aid they couldn’t live without, whether they have ever slept with a man who was using Viagra and if they have ever smoked pot. Celebrity is covered, too – albeit in an adult way. You will find luminaries such as Anjelica Huston and Diane von Furstenberg – but don’t hold your breath for Britney. As Smith says – and she should know, because she’s been writing about the antics of the famous for 35 years – “Celebrity is a debased thing now, in my view. I have known some of the most brilliant people, and I can’t get too thrilled about what people think of now as celebrity.”

Features are contributed by a cast of 15 Wows, made up of founder members and a wider community of specially chosen, equally alpha women, among them Whoopi Goldberg, the comedian Lily Tomlin and the actress Candice Bergen – with Helen Mirren rumoured to be joining soon. They seem to be enjoying themselves. “It’s candid – it encourages me to hang out my laundry there and take a chance on what I’m saying,” Smith says. “Not that I want to be profane and vulgar. I just want to be the way I am in life, which is sometimes not so elevated.”

Still, the quality of contributions is key – no misspelt blog rantings here. So, whether it’s Whoopi on Obama, Wells on how to become a millionaire or Stahl on flirting on the presidential campaign trail, what you find is of a much higher standard than in your average chat room. As Rupert Miles, managing director of Saga Publishing, says of its recently launched and highly popular Saga Zone – a networking site for the overfifties – “one of the things people always say is that they’re so relieved that they don’t have to speak in text language to communicate on it”. And just because you don’t speak in text doesn’t mean communicating is no longer valid. As traditional women’s forums have dried up, the internet chat room has filled the gap.

“When I was a reporter in Washington in the early 1980s, there were very few women around,” Stahl recalls. “The small number of women reporters there were formed a ladies’ lunch group, and this monthly meeting became vital. The conversation was rejuvenating and healthy, and I decided this was almost an atavistic need that women have – to sit around together and talk. If we are deprived of this, we really miss it. It is essential to women for their mental wellbeing.”

For too long now, this generation of women has felt ignored.

“America has been living in this ‘Madison Avenue’, where nothing but young people matters,” Smith says. “And I just think that has to change – the 78m baby-boomers in America will start to retire this year. Statistically, we’re going to be dealing with a much older generation of women and men for about the next 20 years.”

That generation is not about to sit around quietly – not if this lot have anything to do with it. “There is this worry that, when a woman gets to a certain age, she starts to fade and disappear,” Evans laments. “But these women – our women and the women we’re hearing from – are not about that. They’re all adventurous, all curious and all energetic.”

Even if you aren’t part of the same demographic or sky-high professional league as these women, you will find they have an energy and a voice that is infectious, inspiring and, quite frankly, refreshing. “A long time ago, Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, said that there was nothing to equal the power of the menopausal woman,” Smith says. “And I think she is right.”

ADD TO FAVOURITES

www.huffingtonpost.com
Probably the chicest of political blogs on the web – no well-informed woman would miss its daily postings.

www.sagazone.co.uk
Head to the only social-networking site where you’re guaranteed to meet other grown-ups for invaluable tip-swapping.

www.net-a-porter.com
Still the sleekest stop for online shopping – seek out a bit of Oscar de la Renta to get the “Wow O Wow” look.

www.spacenk.co.uk
The website to go to for cutting-edge, lavish skincare and make-up, as well as information on the newest and best products on the block.

www.thefirstpost.co.uk
Delivers news, reviews and just a little bit of gossip in a snappy, informative and guilt-free way.