Sherman takes the departures more personally. While she says she understands that some women simply object to a for-profit women's advocacy organization, or might want to strike out and do something on their own, she objects to how it's being done. "It does hurt me that DigitalEve is literally being built on the Webgrrls membership, as opposed to people just coming from Webgrrls," she says with some emotion.

"There can never be too many great organizations that help women, no matter how they are structured, but to create something not just out of the vision and inspiration of something else but literally out of its membership hurts," Sherman explains. She adds: "The thing that distresses me the most is that all of this is based on helping women, yet from the get-go with Webgrrls -- and almost every women's organization I've ever belonged to -- there's always this infighting."

And that, truly, is the most painful part of this rift. One would like to believe that women united in the common cause of promoting equal rights for women would be, well, united. But just because a group shares the same vision doesn't mean it has the same route to getting there or that conflicting personalities won't get in the way, just as they do in the corporate world.

The women of the Web, in their own peculiar way, can be one of the most difficult groups to organize. Women who have become savvy professionals in the high-tech world tend to be both ardently competitive and well-versed in marketing tactics -- including the practice of promoting one's own product by casting aspersions on others'. DigitalEve knows that to draw membership from Webgrrls it must also distinguish itself by criticizing the other organization.

And yet, in the name of feminism and sisterly love and the betterment of womankind, these women still really want the other women to like them; they hold steadfast to the notion of common ground. So with the same voice that they criticize the women they disagree with, they simultaneously reach out and ask for forgiveness and friendship.

As I was reporting this story, I'd hear critical comments that I was asked not to attribute; then I'd hear about phone calls made behind the scenes to make sure that no one was really angry at anyone. It was difficult to untangle the real story from the complicated layers of female friendship and competitiveness -- and I wondered if it is ever possible to uncover any particular truth from such an internal community struggle.

Meanwhile, other women's organizations are observing Webgrrls' chaos and bitter breakups with consternation. "It is unfortunate -- I think that there are bad feelings about the split," says Anja Harman, president of the Canadian women's organization Wired Women, which has amicable relationships with both DigitalEve and Webgrrls. "But like all things, we need to try to have dialogue to overcome it. We think we can lobby for change -- by all these women's groups existing and working together, we can have greater impact on the large scale."

Webgrrls and Cybergrrl.com might be perceived as relics of a past era. Certainly, Cybergrrl.com never took off the way iVillage and Women.com did, a fact that Sherman blames in part on her reluctance to accept venture capital funding and give up control of her feminist vision to what she saw as "corporate, often only male, investors." Cybergrrl.com -- and as a result, Webgrrls -- have therefore not had the marketing or branding that better-funded organizations and corporations use to launch themselves into the public eye.

Some might even argue that a generalist women-in-technology organization is no longer necessary now that being a woman online isn't a novel concept, but the norm. What's more, can an organization that targets half the Net population ever appease its entire audience? Elaine Sosa, who co-founded SF Women on the Web, believes that Webgrrls was more relevant in the early days of the Net: "The fact that women online grew so quickly kind of obviated, perhaps, such a need [for a broad, global group]. Suddenly more than 50 percent of the people online are women, and [they] are becoming sophisticated in the online world in a very fast clip." Many of these women, she says, are probably more interested in smaller local organizations that target their specific skills or interests.

The women's organizations are still growing, anyway. DigitalEve may be poaching its membership from Webgrrls, but Webgrrls' management says that the organization has still grown more this year than any other year since the heady days of 1996. Women in Technology International, Wired Women, SF Women on the Web and others also claim to be growing rapidly. "Will DigitalEve bring Webgrrls down?" ponders Sherman. "I think they've leveraged what Webgrrls built in order to have a running start with DigitalEve. They have a lot more visibility now than the other organizations have, but despite that visibility Webgrrls is still growing and there are a ton of leaders that are incredibly loyal and very satisfied."

In the meantime, there's plenty of room for improvement. Female entrepreneurs still get a far smaller percentage of venture capital than their male counterparts do. Their presence in boardrooms may be more noticeable, but they are still overwhelmed by men in suits. And despite the presence of Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, women are mostly absent from the Fortune 500.

"The idea that women in technology as an entity or as a force need to be recognized is not something that has faded at all; if anything it's come into more significance," says DigitalEve's Evans. "The numbers of women online are equal to men, but the number of women in the technology workforce is around 20 percent; for the technical employees, 80 percent are still men. That's a discrepancy that still really needs to be addressed."

The more these disparate communities unite to promote their vision, the farther their voices will be heard. Despite the growing pains and despite the fact that no organization can make all women happy, at least women agree on that vision. The question is whether they can shake hands and make it happen.

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