Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption and Identity

Citation

Liff, S. (2003), "Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption and Identity", Information Technology & People, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 484-486. https://doi.org/10.1108/09593840310509671

This collection of 16 articles aims to introduce a “gender dimension” into contemporary debates about the development and impact of information and communication technologies. These authors are all engaged in theoretical and empirical research which address the absence of studies on women, or on men as men, in mainstream accounts. How they do this, of course, varies enormously. Most obviously, contributions here include studies which seek to explore how men and women vary (or not) in their engagement with new technologies (e.g. Michaelson and Pohl's study of e‐mail communication among students, Eileen Green's review of research on the gendered aspects of technology and leisure, and Lohan's analysis of men's changing use of the telephone). Rather than merely documenting sex differences these accounts provide a gender analysis by exploring and conceptualising the processes through which such patterns emerge.

Two accounts of virtual reality games illustrate this. Nicola Green discusses the tension between the disruptive potential of such games through the opportunity for “virtual” identities and experiences versus the embeddedness of playing game in specific sites and embodied users. She argues that the outcome cannot be reduced to either the reproduction of gender relations or an escape from them, and needs to be analysed within particular locales. Yates and Littleton analyse studies which show that gender is a factor in success in particular types of games, similar games with different content, and even whether a task is defined as a game or not. Part of the explanation they see is provided by the “affordances” of technology and its relation to gender specific “abilities” and “effectivities” of users. They then pose the interesting issue of women who do participate in, and enjoy, games which are commonly seen as stereotypically masculine. Using the concept of subject positioning, they explore such women's problematic, but active participation as “gamers”.

The engagement with female agency represents a development from earlier discussions of gender and technology which tended to stress women's lack of access and the resulting need for special initiatives to include women in the benefits associated with technical change. Such an approach is now seen by many as overly deterministic – constructing women as “victims” or as “having a problem” and needing to “catch up” with men. This “deficit model” is also being challenged by those who see women's engagement with technology as potentially transformative of broader social relations. So, for example, Youngs discusses the international “Women on the Net” project as not only an opportunity to give women a voice in international issues, but also to transform what is seen as the legitimate focus and subject matter of international relations. Similarly, Vehviläinen's discusses the way in which women in an isolated part of Finland disrupted notions of citizenship, technical expertise and neighbourhood through their participation in a women's IT network. In contrast, Adam argues that an effective understanding of, and response, to cyberstalking is being compromised by being seen within a liberal equality model rather than in terms of a feminist ethics of care.

Most contemporary accounts of gender and technology see the issue as deeper than gendered subjects engaging with neutral technologies. Instead specific technologies are themselves understood as in some way gendered – meaning that they embody values, content, practices or skills that are more commonly associated with one gender or the other. This understanding is mainly implicit (but clearly central) to the contributions to this collection. However, one chapter explicitly engages with the design process that contributes to the production of gendered technologies. This describes the creation of the Amsterdam Digital City, one of the first such attempts at “virtual” citizen engagement. Rommes et al. use the concept of “gender scripts” to argue that despite a specific commitment to “access for all”, the designers’ own computer familiarity, preferred learning styles and interests led them to create a product which engaged the interest of a much higher proportion of men than women.

A few of the chapters encourage reflection on broader analyses and understandings of gender. Stepulevage uses an autobiographical structure to show that being female is not a uniform experience, but varies with class and ethnicity. She provides an account of her own working class childhood engagement with practical technologies which challenges conventional feminist accounts of women's exclusion. A number of chapters on computer games discuss the facility whereby users can “switch gender” online or choose a “gender” beyond the “real” male/female dichotomy. Users make relatively little use of this facility and often feel uncomfortable themselves adopting or interacting with other players of uncertain gender. Given the apparent superficiality and lack of consequence of the deception this underlines the centrality of gender to our sense of self. Roberts and Parks report that switching is more common for homosexual game players or those with a disability – presumably they are people for whom the traditional assumptions that go along with a gender identity sit less comfortably with their own, or other people's, sense of who they are. Jimroglou describes a webcam which displays regular, real time images of a young woman's bedroom with or without her naked/clothed, sleeping/working/sexually active body as being disruptive of conventional gendered practices. The cyborg “Jennicam” (through being controlled by the real Jenni) is said to disrupt the notion of the female as the object of the male gaze. This reader remained unconvinced!

Overall this collection provides a valuable introduction to the concerns and approaches of those researching technology from a gender perspective. It shows that studies have moved far beyond critique or simply “adding women in”. The number of chapters on computer games might engage the interest of more male readers than many such collections. If they could be persuaded to read it, it might provide fresh insights to those who argue that their own research on IT does not have any gender implications.