A power shift is taking place in the traditionally male-dominated sex industry with the arrival of a new breed of entrepreneur: the webmistress. More than 50 per cent of websites in the booming online pornography business are now owned and operated by women - and the number is steadily rising.
The new 'scarlet-collar' worker is typically a 25- to 35-year-old former prostitute or lap dancer with young children and a desire to better her income while working from home. She has working class roots and hides her profession behind a veneer of suburban respectability.
A psychologist has described the webmistress phenomenon as 'neo-feminism'. 'Women whose lives were once controlled by male pimps, porn film-makers and publishers are moving up the food chain,' said Dr Kimberlianne Podlas.
A former New York criminal lawyer and now a leading psychologist at the Bryant Institute in New Jersey, Podlas began using her legal contacts to track down women in cyberporn.
'I was very surprised to find just how many women were involved,' she said. 'In terms of intelligence, these webmistresses are not high ranking, but their motivation is fierce. If someone is going to make money out of their bodies and their images, then they want it to be themselves. 'This really is a liberation for women in the sex industry.'
Podlas talked to the owners of 71 heterosexual websites. She believes cyberporn may have to be re-evaluated by feminists.
'It may, in fact, combat negative imagery and increase women's power,' she said.
It is a point of view shared by Lauren, 29. Last year she gave up a nine-to-five clerical job to go into escort work and after two weeks gave it up for cyberporn. Working with Amy, a 19-year-old photographer and web designer, she stars in, operates and owns her website.
She told The Observer she was earning £30,000 a year. 'My body is my asset and it is logical to exploit it,' she said. 'I'm selling it just like Dr Podlas sells her brainpower. This way I have control: they look but they don't touch.'
Not all webmistresses are motivated by money. When advertising executive Kelly Jacobs wired her West Midlands flat with £15,000 of camcorders, she declared having thousands of strangers view her nude antics around her home every day was fun.
Her website, Babe TV, which costs subscribers £8.50 a month, immediately started pulling in £4,000 a month from viewers watching a series of new still images transmitted every 30 seconds.
'Babe TV is not pornography,' she said. 'It is tastefully done, and very classy. And I really enjoy it.'
According to Podlas the rise of the webmistress has happened in the last two years. 'If the numbers of women continue to increase at this rate we will very soon see men barely represented in this industry,' she adds.
It is all a radical change for pornography - once described by porn star Mimi Miyagi as 'so male-dominated it is almost impossible for a woman to have any control'.
Whoever is the porn merchant, sex undoubtedly sells and we may be seeing the tip of the iceberg on just how much cybersex can earn. It has an added advantage in the internet marketplace in that people are more keen to shop for it online than to be seen ducking into a sex shop.
Danni Ashe was one of the first cyberporn millionairesses. A soft-core star, her Dannivision site was among the world's first to exploit new technology allowing porn to move away from static images to live film clips.
Her entrepreneurial spirit means she is perhaps the richest webmistress of all: last year her empire of online adult entertainment earned her £5m.
Another American porn star, Annie Sprinkle, who was in the UK recently to promote her new film about the industry, said she believed feminism was now pro-porn. 'We are winning the war that says the answer to bad pornography is no pornography. That's not right and more and more feminists are agreeing with that. The solution is for women to make better porn.'
Podlas believes the webmistress is here to stay. 'Pornography has been described as a man's boot on a woman's neck,' she said. 'The shoe may now be on the other foot.'
tracy.mcveigh@observer.co.uk
