Van Z Fem Internet Studies

Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2001

Feminist Internet Studies1 Liesbet van Zoonen A journal dedicated to feminist media studies will no doubt spend time and attention to discussions of the Internet, a rapidly growing network technology that comes to us through the computer, television and mobile phone. The ubiquitous presence of the Internet has drawn itÐ as a technologyÐ out of the realm of the IT sector into the ® eld of consumer and media technologies. While it does not yet have the same reach as television or radio, the Internet is on its way to becoming a new ª massº medium. ª Massº not in the sense of the content and communication that it provides, because both can be highly individual, but in the sense of the number of people having access to it. This access is as yet thoroughly strati® ed along lines of income as well as along (related) lines of age, ethnicity, nationality and gender. Part of these inequalities are temporary: age differences will disappear in the long run; various ethnic groups are now beginning to ® nd their way to the Internet and in the US the number of women on line presently equals the number of men. On the European continent and in the UK the user rate is about two males to one female, but many now consider that inequality will have disappeared before long. Income differences, however, both individual and national, will for a long time to come prevent the Internet from becoming a true medium for the masses.2 Internet, men and masculinity The Internet is no longer a prerogative of the IT sector and with its entrance into the domain of consumer and media technologies feminist theories and perspectives on it have changed dramatically. Only 10 years ago, the dominant feminist vision on new information and communication technologies was that they were male dominated. Structural, social psychological and cultural factors rooted in a patriarchal society were all seen to prevent women from gaining access to ICTs, both as producers and as users (Liesbet van Zoonen 1992). Contemporary feminist ICT studies are remarkably different from those developed in the early 1990s. With the speed that characterizes Internet developments in general, feminist thought has transformed from models of male dominance to claims of the Internet being a technology true and close to women and femininity. This might come as a surprise since the structural, social psychological and cultural factors that explain women’s reticence towards ICTs have not changed. If we look at the actor networks, texts and representations and users of the Internet there is little reason to think it provides a whole new gender context. The so-called ª actor networkº of human and technical actors involved in the development of the Internet as a technology is almost 100% male. In John Naughton’s (1999) brief history of the Internet only one woman is foundÐ Nicola PellowÐ who was involved in the development of HTML in the 1980s. 3 Male ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/01/010067-06 Ó DOI: 10.1080/14680770120042864

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dominance in ICT research and developments is not likely to change, on the contrary. The number of women studying and working in the sector in the US has fallen from 30% in 1989 to 15% in 1999 (Nua 1998). In addition, in terms of ª textsº and ª representationsº the Internet is also not simply a women’s haven. Although there are few systematic analyses of the representations and constructions of gender on the Internet, there is enough evidence about (child) pornography, right wing extremism, sexual harassment, ¯ aming and other unpleasantness to disclaim any utopian vision of the Internet as an unproblematic feminine environment. It is telling that an important women’s movement on the net, that of the webgrrls, had to name itself ª grrlsº , instead of ª girlsº because searching on the net for ª girlsº mainly produces sex sites and very little relevant material for women (Aliza Sherman 1998). Finally, in terms of users, with the exception of the US, the majority of Internet users are male. The current overwhelming commercialization of the World Wide Web puts women’s participation on the net in a new but well-known light. In the emerging conditions and requirements of the new virtual economy, women are constructed as Internet users in very particular and limiting ways. The US situation shows us what is to come: women are now using the Internet in equal numbers as men, but they are usually targeted as consumers and online shoppers. We may be moving towards a situation then, in which ª the digital divideº in the Western world does not express itself in terms of numbers of women and men having access to the Internet, but in terms of the uses to which the Internet is put by women and men. The political (new) economy of the Internet thus tends to reconstruct the common gendered distinction between consumption and production, between entertainment and information. Internet, women and femininity Nevertheless, several highly reputed feminist scholars have claimed that the Internet is a woman’s medium. This belief is becoming so widespread and largely undisputed that longtime feminist critic of technology Ellen Balka (1999) recently exclaimed: ª Where have all the feminist technology critics gone?º She argues that earlier critical views on information technologies have given way to a ª cyberfeminismº that has been seduced by the radical potential of the World Wide Web. Dale Spender (1995), for instance, made an early feminist claim on the Internet as a medium especially relevant for individual and collective networking of women, and also for other subordinated groups, for that matter. Sherry Turkle, professor in the sociology of science at MIT and author of an in¯ uential book on the construction of identities through Internet communication (Turkle 1995), claims that one needs an ethic of community, consensus and communication on the Internet and this is what she thinks women in particular are good at (H. Jenkins 1999: 332). Similarly, Sadie Plant, acclaimed in the British press to be the most radical ª techno theoristº of today, sees femininity to be the core element of network technology which she articulates with women’s relation to weaving: In spite or perhaps even because of the impersonality of the screen, the digital zone facilitates unprecedented levels of spontaneous affection, intimacy and informality, exposing the extent to which older media, especially what continues

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to be called ª real lifeº , come complete with a welter of inhibitions, barriers and obstacles sidestepped by the packet-switching systems of the Net. (Plant 1998: 144)

Other authors have compared the experience of the net, the immersion of its user in its textual, visual and virtual realities, to that of the foetus in the womb. The Internet experience is considered in analogue with the secure and unconstrained experience of the maternal matrix that offers an escape from the constraints of the body (Thomas H. Ogden 1986; Claudia Springer 1991, as discussed in Kevin Robins 1995). Side-stepping for a moment the gender essentialism contained in such views and looking at the pragmatic effects of such arguments, we can see how authors like Spender, Turkle and Plant are working towards a rede® nition of the Internet from the exclusively masculine domain born out of the American military± industrial± academic complex towards its feminine antithesis of peaceful communication and experimentation. Thinking back on the history of the telephone, for instance, and the way women had to ® ght their way into its acceptable use (MicheÂle Martin 1991), thinking of the masculine culture that still encapsulates the computer, thinking more generally of the way technology has been made masculine throughout its history (Ruth Oldenziel 1999), one can recognize the importance of such a project of rede® nition. Nevertheless, one needs to ignore some widespread and well-known Internet practices that I indicated earlier both to be able to put forward such theories and to go along with them. In addition, such perspectives ignore the political new economy of the Internet that primarily tends to construct women as online consumers. Feminist authors who claim the Internet to be a woman’s medium ® nd themselves in an unexpected and unsolicited alliance with Internet marketing researchers. They too, claim the Internet to be a ª woman’s worldº (VODW 1999) and female users of the WWW are thought to be distinct in their goals and online behaviour. Several marketing studies claim to show women are more interested than men in personal interaction and support (e.g. e-mail, chat groups and forums). They seek to build a personal relation with a site and feel strongly connected to online communities. In a trend report conducted for the German women’s magazine Freundin (translation: Girl Friend), it is argued that womanhood offers many opportunities nowadays and very few disadvantages, new technologies like the Internet make life easier, enhance the possibilities for communication and offer new possibilities for consumption: ª The new media enlarge women’s horizons and scope of action. Women will shape the nature of the Net economyº . At present, marketing research constructs women as communicative consumers for whom the Internet provides opportunities never had before. This picture is so convincing that many e-commerce strategies are built on it: the American portal women.com, for instance, offers not only an enormous amount of online content (over 90,000 pages) on traditional women’s concerns, as well as forums and chatline possibilities on a variety of traditionally gendered topics. Deconstructing the ªfemininityº of the Internet Feminist theories and market research thus offer us a framework for thinking about the Internet that highlights the feminine and feminist qualities of the net.

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It is, however, a very speci® c notion of femininity which claims that women, femininity, communication and community are undissolvably linked. Such a notion borders on essentialism and has caused many an irritation among women, as this exclamation of an online ª grrl gamerº shows: Community and collaboration are what women bring to the table? God, that is so 1950s, so retro, so family and heart and Donna Reed. We’re good little community makers and collaborators. We don’t ever do anything ground breaking, just create nice little places to live and work and raise our babies. That’s what women are good at! If we work together, we can all be friends! I want to be King! That’ s right, King! Hail to the King, baby! I want all the best stuff and I want it all for me and I will knock the hell out of anyone who tries to take a piece of my action. Not very community driven and collaborative, am I? (N. Douglas 1999: 332± 333)

One is tempted to consider such a viewpoint an exception, especially when taking the hard ® gures of marketing research into account, which seem to ª proveº that women like communication and community building on the net. Marketing research, however, cannot be taken at face value. To begin with, it covers only a very small part of our multitude of social roles, namely, our role as consumer. A relatively well-known study on women on the Internet is called: ª The Online Woman. How to Tap into her Buying Powerº (Nua 1999). It thus does not cover the question how women relate to the Internet as citizen, employee, activist, hobbyist, intellectual, and so forth. A more fundamental problem of marketing research, however, has to do with its ª institutional epistemologyº , to paraphrase Ien Ang’s (1991) work on television ratings research. In her book Desperately Seeking the Audience, she describes how ratings research is embedded in institutional contexts and requirements. Ratings are considered useful information on which to build programming strategies on and to sell airtime to advertisers. They do not produce knowledge about ª the dynamic complexity of the social worlds of actual audiencesº (Ang 1991: 155). According to Ang, we can never wholly understand the television audience, but have to comply with the fact that ª audiencehoodº consists of an endless and ubiquitous variety of practices and experiences which we will never be able to completely grasp. Internet marketing research shares with television ratings research strategic purposes and epistemological ¯ aws: it is a means to sell advertising space, but it does not tell much about actual uses, meanings, need, practices and interpretations of Internet users. The Internet offers an endless amount and variety of information, entertainment, communication and other types of ª contentº to which users can also add their own offerings. The nature of the Internet produces a fragmentation of audiences, audience behaviour and audience experiences which can never be captured by an all-encompassing, representative theoretical framework or research project. In fact, the mere term ª audienceº does not suf® ce in the context of the Internet in which users are hailed into an active relation with Internet supply and have become producers of their own content as well. Internet usage and meanings are therefore more contradictory and unruly than marketing research suggests. The same holds for feminist perspectives on the Internet: the nature of the technology is such that the claim of a one dimensional gendered practice of the Internet, be it feminine (as in female communication) or masculine (as in male domi-

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nation), is bound to miss the rich diversity of gender articulations on and with the net. In that respect, there is still much to learn from feminist research on the old media which also stresses the contextual nature of meaning construction and its feminist relevance (or lack thereof). Nancy Baym’s (2000) study on rec.arts.tv.soaps, the usernet group which is devoted to American daytime soap operas, is a study that explicitly builds on this tradition in feminist media research. Baym shows very convincingly how the topic of the discussion group (soaps), the nature of soap fandom, the gender of the group’s participants (primarily women) and the role of important individuals in the group, together construct particular mores and codes for this virtual community which are characterized by cooperation, consensus seeking and friendliness. It would be too easy to couple these features to a supposed speci® c communicative style of women (as the marketing researchers and some feminist theories discussed earlier tend to do). It is the great merit of Baym’s work that she shows the virtual feminine culture of the soap discussion group to be constructed out of more factors than only the gender of most participants. Her work indicates in more general terms that gender is performative and contextual, on the Internet as much as in the ª oldº media. Notes 1. This essay is based on various public lectures: my inaugural lecture as Professor of Gender and Multimedia at the University of Maastricht (van Zoonen 2000), a keynote address prepared for the British Media, Cultural Studies and Communication Association but not held due to illness and an address prepared for the Europe Mundi meeting of Unesco, November 2000. 2. Figures about Internet use tend to change very rapidly. I base these ® gures on a search in June 2000 in the following statistical portals: www.nua.com, www.cyberatlas.com, both operating in the context of marketing research. 3. The author himself went through some trouble to ® nd more women in Internet history but could not ® nd them. E-mail conversation, 1999. www.briefhistory.com.

References Ang, Ien. 1991. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge. Balka, Ellen. 1999. ª Where Have all the Feminist Technology Critics Gone?º Loka Alert 6:6. Online. Available: http://www.loka.org (24 November 1999). Baym, Nancy K. 2000. Tune in, Log on. Soaps, Fandom and Online Community. London: Sage. Douglas, N. 1999. ª Grrls & Gaming on ABC News,º in J. Cassels and H. Jenkins (eds.) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Gender and Computer Games, pp. 331± 334. Cambridge: MIT Press. Jenkins, H. 1999. ª Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back,º in J. Cassels and H. Jenkins (eds.) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Gender and Computer Games, pp. 328± 341. Cambridge: MIT Press. Martin, MicheÂle. 1991. Hello Central? Gender, Technology and Culture in the Formation of Telephone Systems. Montreal: McGill± Queen’ s University Press. Naughton, John. 1999. A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Nua. 1998. ª It’s an Image Thing.º Nua Internet Surveys. Online. Available: http:// www.nua.ie/surveys/?f 5 VS&art id 5 886595295&rel 5 true (28 April 2000). Nua. 1999. ª Six Types of Women Who Use the Net.º Nua Internet Surveys. Online.

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Available: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/?f 5 VS&art id 5 905355414&rel 5 true (28 April 2000). Ogden, Thomas H. 1986. The Matrix of the Mind: Object Relations and the Psychoanalytic Dialogue. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Oldenziel, Ruth. 1999. Making Technology Masculine. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Plant, Sadie. 1998. Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. London: Fourth Estate. Robins, Kevin. 1995. ª Cyberspace and the World We Live In,º in M. Featherstone and R. Burrows (eds.) Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunks, pp. 135± 155. London: Sage. Sherman, Aliza. 1998. Cybergrrl! A Woman’s Guide to the World Wide Web. New York: Ballantine Books. Spender, Dale. 1995. Nattering on the Net. Women, Power and Cyberspace. North Melbourne: Spinifex Press. Springer, Claudia. 1991. ª The Pleasure of the Interface.º Screen 32(3): 303± 323. Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster. van Zoonen, Liesbet. 1992. ª Feminist Theory and Information Technology.º Media, Culture and Society 14(1): 9± 30. van Zoonen, Liesbet. 2000. ª Virtuele Vrouwen: Constructies Van Gender Online.º (Virtual Women: Online Constructions of Women). Inaugural lecture, University Maastricht. VODW. 1999. ª Internet: It’s a Woman’s World.º VODW Making Waves New York. Online. Available: http://www.vodw.com/ makingwaves/(28 April 2000).

Liesbet van Zoonen (1959) is Professor of Gender and Multimedia at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She is published in various international journals on gender and media, is the author of Feminist Media Studies (Sage, 1994) and the co-editor of Gender, Politics and Communication (Hampton, 2000). She is currently also working on the articulation of politics and popular culture.

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