Where can you go if you are a woman and you want some free webspace to build your own homepage?  Well, of course, any free webspace provider (from here on in, to be known as FWP) is available, but you might want to put your homepage in a woman-friendly place.

women.com and iVillage.com are very similar FWPs.  They both give you five megabytes of space for your homepage and a free email address.  They also use the same web shell, which is similar to the lay-out that Angelfire used to use and is also used by Chickpages and Gurlpages.  You can use their images and backgrounds or you can upload your own.

They both also have plenty of content in the form of message boards, chat and mini-magazine content from their partners, such as Better-Health and Women's Wire.  There are sections on parenting, health, spirituality, dieting, working women, etc.

The only thing I have against them is that they are American.  There is no such organisation in the UK and I think we could easily support one.

For the younger women and teens, there are Gurlpages and Chickpages.  The former gives you 11mbs and an email adress, and you get 5mbs with an address from the latter.  No message boards or magazine content, though they do link up to "mother" sites which include those items.

At Geocities you can go to Wellesley, the women's community which has plenty of space.  You get 15mbs and an email address, message boards, chat and lots more! Tripod has the women's pod, which is something like a cross between a webring and a message board, though they do not specifically have a women's community in the sense that Geocities does.  I have seen women's sections in Net-taxi (though there doesn't seem to be any takers there yet), and lots of other FWPs include some way of listing your homepage in their women's section.

But if it's a women's community you want, in every sense of the word, then I would recommend iVillage, women.com or Geocities, or the new ones in Fortunecity.  And I still think that there is enough scope for some enterprising woman with money and contacts to build a British women's community and FWP.  I have even seriously thought about it myself, but I do not have the contacts or the knowledge to do something like that.  Any takers?