More than 30,000 women are currently members of Webgrrls, and many more have passed through the community over the years. Webgrrls' impact on the wired female population has been profound. But Webgrrls is no longer the only game in town, and these days numerous women's communities are pursuing similar pro-women, pro-technology agendas. Cybergrrl.com, once one of the most popular sites for women on the Web, has since been upstaged by Goliaths like iVillage.com, Women.com and Oxygen.com. Meanwhile, Sherman, burned out on the digital world, has left both Webgrrls and Cybergrrl.com in the hands of others -- including, controversially, a man -- and is now traveling across the country in an R.V.

Webgrrls has experienced many changes, but the most recent blow hurt the most. A new organization called DigitalEve, created in part by former high-level Webgrrls staffers, is working hard to steal Webgrrls' thunder and become the No. 1 community for women in technology. Launched on Nov. 13, DigitalEve is slowly but surely eroding the base of the Webgrrls community, as entire Webgrrls chapters defect to the new organization. After less than two months in existence, DigitalEve claims to have drawn 10,000 members -- a large number of them straight from Webgrrls' membership.

This has led to some bitter blood in the women's technology community. The myriad women's organizations -- not just Webgrrls and DigitalEve but also Women in Technology International, Wired Women, San Francisco Women on the Web, HerDomain and others -- are working toward a common agenda: the empowerment of women through digital means. And with their feminist ideology and eye toward equal rights, it will be lot easier to forge change if the women's organizations work together. But sharing an X chromosome and a guiding principle does not guarantee that all the groups will get along. And now that women are no longer the minority on the Net, perhaps they shouldn't have to.

As a woman who believes in the power of women's communities, I find it difficult to write about the failings of organizations like Webgrrls or DigitalEve. How can we -- believers in female empowerment -- turn a critical eye to the inner workings of these groups without running the risk of undermining a movement we essentially believe in? Sadly, the battles over Webgrrls are characteristic of the kind of infighting that has plagued women's movements -- online and off -- for years. For some reason, sisterhood is too often tempered with a destructive competitiveness. No community is without its own internal battles, but when women's communities splinter, it's particularly painful.

The Free Software Project
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