Being Digital, and Domestically Challenged, Part 2 Leslie Regan Shade McGill University, Graduate Program in Communications 3465 Peel St., Montreal, Quebec H3A 1W7 Internet: ac900@freenet.carleton.ca A discussion paper prepared for Community Access to the Information Highway, Ottawa, May 7-9, 1995. Copyright 1995 by Leslie Regan Shade. The paper is publically licensed so that it may be copied for further distribution, provided that it is copied and distributed in its entirety, including this title page. _Introduction:_ These ruminations on gender and the net continue previous work I've done on gender issues in computer networking and in particular, a recent discussion paper for a CIAC/Industry Canada Invitational Workshop on urban access to information technology. In that paper I briefly outlined the various facets related to access, including: --the hardware and software to support communications --resource discovery tools to expedite the exploration of the Internet --a user-centred design --a multifarious array of content --network literacy --domestic placement of hardware and software Here I'd like to discuss: --the continuing development of online resources developed for and by women --current projects in Canada designed to get more women online --the increasing social discourse surrounding the domestication of information technology, and --the need for women to be integrally involved in Canada's public lane on the `info-highway-bahn' _Demographics Again_ Yes, Virginia, there are more men online that women. J.C. Herz (female) wrote, regarding the presence of women in cyberspace: "Away from the subdivisions of online suburbia, the Net rolls away in vast stretches of coiled copper telephone wire and supports a free-ranging population of info addicts, Sega warriors, crypto-anarchists, and teen hackers. Forget the media ballyhoo about electronic town halls and virtual parlors; the net is more saloon than salon. Not too many women in these here parts, scant discussion of philosophy and impressionist paintings, and no tea sandwiches. Rather, much of the Net exudes a ballistic ambience seldom found outside post-apocalyptic splatterpunk video games. Someone should nail up a sign: `Now entering the Net. Welcome to Boyland. Don't mind the bodily fluids and cartoon-caliber violence. And if you can't take someone ripping your arm off and beating you with the bloody stump, go back to where you came from, girlie'....As one netter put it, `Chicks on computers are considered to be chicks first, and human beings second (if at all). It's something special if you meet a babe on a BBS'. As a BBS babe, I have to agree. If someone were to ask me how many of us there are, I'd give the easy answer: damn few." (Herz, 1995, 52-3). A recent survey on users of the World Wide Web user revealed that: "Preliminary results of a Georgia Tech survey finally lift the veil on the demographics of the passengers on the Information Superhighway. Using the World-Wide Web (WWW) and technology developed at Georgia Tech, researchers Jim Pitkow and Mimi Recker now know that the typical user is a 30-year old educated male from North America who works with computers...The results enable businesses to target their services, as well as facilitate development of user-friendly information technologies. Wide-spread networking coupled with the ease of publishing multimedia materials within the Web will support radical changes in areas such as medicine, education, business, and entertainment" (see Georgia Tech, 1994). An investigation of the users who access the Internet through the online catalogue and information system at the University of Toronto revealed that most of the users (91%) owned a computer and a modem (74%) and were accessing the Internet from home (56%). The study also "supported the popularly held idea that the Internet has more male than female users since we found that 76% of the respondents were male. This is from a general university population which is only 48% male. In a similar online survey of users of the OPAC [at University of Toronto], the percentage of male users was 51% so the difference appears to be related to the Internet, not to, say, a greater tendency among men to answer surveys online. The Internet provides access to both academic resources and a wide array of non-academic sources whereas OPACs provide access mainly to required academic resources. Therefore these data might be interpreted as supporting a popular notion of computer usage; that is that males like to explore the potential of computers while women prefer to use systems in a task oriented context" (Tillotson, et.al., 1995). Nancy Tamosaitis (1995) researched male and female participation in commercial online services, and came up with low figures for female participation: Estimated Males/Females Online 92/8% CompuServe 65-75/25-35% America Online (AOL) 77/23% GEnie 90/10% Delphi 90/10% eWorld (Macintosh) 60/40% Prodigy 85-90/10-15% guesstimate for "the internet" Tamosaitis attributes these low figures for female participation to the fact that most online forums have little to offer in the way of content for women. For instance, of the many CompuServe forums, only nine are found with the keyword "women", and of those, six are shopping services and one is a collection of pictures of girls in lingerie. (However, in 1994, U.S. News Online, a conference on CompuServe for the magazine U.S. News & World Report, hosted an online symposium to discuss issues facing women around the world. The conference, which started on International Women's Day, included an international cast of women leaders in politics, healthcare, economics, and the arts). AOL has forums for Women's Day Online and Women's Center. An exception to this would be Women's Wire, an online service based in San Francisco, whose goal is to provide a multifarious array of content for the diverse information needs of women. There, participation is 90% women [info@wwire.net]; ECHO (East Coast Hang Out) [URL:http://www.echonyc.com/], and the Well [URL: http://www.well.com] both have women as active participants. What is the gender breakdown for community nets? My sense is that more women are participating in the development of community nets as users, volunteers, and staff. The National Capital Freenet survey currently underway by researchers at the Communications Research Centre preliminarily finds higher participation by women in the NCF than on the Internet, but female participation does not equal male participation. _Women's Content & `Unintended Consequences'..._ I've been following (with interest and horror) both the popular media fascination with the `information highway', and (with less horror and more approval and bemusement) the appearance of popular media forms on the Internet itself, aided and abetted by the explosion of the World Wide Web. Content designed for and by women has been increasing, and covers a diverse topical range- for the academic to the activist to the anarchist. There's both solid and indispensable information and resources, a sense that information can be empowering, and a playfulness and zestful irony. It is a fulfillment of `creating a cyberspace of our own' (Ebben, Kramarae, 1993, p. 15). A brief perusal of W3 sites developed by and for women can be loosely classified into the following topical categories: --Computer Science and Engineering (i.e., TAP: Tapping Internet Resources for Women in Computer Science, Ellen Spertus' Women and Computer Science, Univ. Maryland Database on Computing) --Academic Programs, (i.e., Univ. Maryland Women's Studies database) --Gender and Sexuality --Healthcare (i.e, breast cancer info, midwifery) --Activism (i.e., On The Issues magazine, IGC and Web resources, Women's Wire, Feminist Activist Resources on the Net, Rock for Choice, Assault Prevention Information Network, domestic violence) --Gender and the Net (Webgrrls!, Spiderwomen, The Pheminist Cyber Roadshow, CPSR's resources) --Fun Things (fanzines, newsletters, personal home pages) These resources differ in attitude and scope from those concocted by commercial entities. For instance, Jeanne Beker of CITY-TV's FT-Fashion Television has set up a W3 site @fashion located on MCI's server. Quoted in the Toronto Star, she says that "Ninety to 95% of Internet users are male...We want to cultivate a female audience". The article further says: "Once women are hooked on @fashion, MCI feels they will just naturally want to spend money in their electronic marketplace...[says Beker] `Women will be able to see Victor Alfaro's latest show on @fashion, then go shopping for his clothes in the cybermall'" (Morra, 1995, D3). Women don't need clothesware-they need hardware! Why the presumption, though, that women's content must be commodified? Is this sentiment an attribute of gender, or does it merely reflect prevailing business inclinations? For instance, the preponderance of submissions to the CRTC in response to the Information Highway Hearings (Public Notice 1994-130) reduced Canadians to mere passive 'consumers' of the products that the telephone, cable, and television industries want to propagate, and reflected business prospects and managerial implications (Shade, Feb. 1995). My sense is that computer networking will become yet another example of how women's use and appropriation of a communications technology changes its original trajectory-in this case, the current commercial rhetoric which essentially espouses a one-way flow of information and pitches consumer marketplaces. (It's interesting to note that the original developers of internetworking technology, including groups at XeroxPARC, various universities, and grassroots coalitions, built up the technology to champion socialization and community. Their overriding concern was to make the technology openly accessible to the public, and not confined to a technological priesthood (see Rheingold, 1993). The unintended consequences of women's use of technology is vividly illustrated by the social history of the telephone: "...from the first decades of the twentieth century, women used the telephone, and used it often, to pursue what they, rather than men, wanted: conversation" (Fischer, 1992, 233). Michele Martin's account of the early development of the telephone system in Canada relates how women subscribers were primarily responsible for developing a viable culture of the telephone, thus appropriating it use in ways unforeseen by Bell and changing its public perception as a `germ collector' and `nerve-racking' technology (Martin, 1991, p. 162). Women tended to use the telephone for talking to one another and shopping at home, and the rural party- line system allowed for participation in community life by `meeting on the lines'. Such uses compelled Bell to change their developmental strategy to encompass domestic use. Many studies, as documented by Fischer "confirm that women today are much heavier users of the residential telephone than are men" (Ibid, 232). But how are women using the telephone? Ann Moyal's case study of telephone use by women in Australia affirmed a vigorous and forceful feminine culture of the telephone within a diverse cross-spectrum of women, where the telephone served to fulfill social, familial. economic, volunteer, and community activities (Moyal, 1993). These findings were also affirmed in Lana Rakow's study of rural American women, where the telephone served to link both the public and community life, and the private, domestic sphere (Rakow, 1992). Given the increase in diverse women actively staking out some of that `electronic frontier' turf that I've witnessed and participated in during the last few years, I imagine the same progression will happen with the emerging information infrastructure. _Current Projects in Canada_ Several ongoing projects in Canada have as their goals the integration of women into the `information infrastructure'. --Canadian Women's Networking Support Program, Web/NirvCentre CWNSP is available on the Web [info@web.apc.org], a computer network specifically designed for people working on the environment. women's issues, international development, human rights, education and social justice. The aim of the CWNSP is to get grassroots' and NGO women's organizations online. They have produced a guide for women, have given demo's at women's conferences across the country, and are developing a cross-Canada mentoring program. They are organizing communications for Canadian women's groups who are participating in the September 1995 Beijing UN Worldwide Conference on Women through several conferences (Surman, 1995). [for info contact:women95@web.apc.org]. See also URL: http://www/web.apc.org and http://spinne.web.net/homebase/fem.html Web is a founding member of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), a collection of networks from around with world with similar mandates. A recent compilation of women's organizations online with the APC and partner networks attests to the diversity of organizations. Over 80 groups in Africa, Australia, the Philippines, Belgium, England, Switzerland, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. are represented. Issues of concern include healthcare, the environment, the media, education, legal services, housing, and economics. Groups include the Tanzania Media Women's Association; Australian Office of the Status of Women; The Centre for Women's Resources in the Philippines; the Brazilian Associacao Democratica Feminina Gaucha; Women in Development Europe; in the U.K., Baby Milk Action, Oxfam Gender & Development Unit, Women's Aid to Yugoslavia, Women's Environmental Network, and the Manchester Women's Electronic Village Hall; in Canada the YWCA and Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women; and in the U.S., the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, Global Fund, League of Women Voters, Women's Cancer Resource Center, International League of Peace & Freedom, Women's World Banking, and many others. Virtual Sisterhood, an initiative of WomensNet/Institute for Global Communication, also an APC affiliate [URL: http://www.igc.org/vsister/vsister.html] is a global women's electronic support network dedicated to increasing women's access to and effective use of electronic communications. They are currently producing a directory and resource guide, multi-lingual information resources, and a newsletter, and have a discussion list, vs.onlinestrat, set up at WomensNet@IGC. [For more information contact vsister@igc.apc.org] --Ellen Balka Prof. Ellen Balka of Women's Studies at Memorial University has been examining the accessibility of computer networks to women's organizations in Newfoundland and Labrador. In their paper Balka and Doucette (1994) addressed two areas of access: i) the extent to which women's organizations have access to computer hardware and software; and ii), the extent to which these groups have access to knowledge required to successfully utilize computer equipment. She has also examined some of the social and technical problems faced by workers in organizations serving women as they attempt to use computer equipment. [ebalka@leif.ucs.mun.ca] --E-Connections E-Connections conducted an Ontario Network Infrastructure Program (ONIP) sponsored feasibility study from July 1994- March 1995 which investigated technical and social issues surrounding the use of electronic mail (e-mail) within non- profit and labour organizations in the Province of Ontario. Steering committee members represented the housing, labour, childcare, social services, and women's sector. E-Connection has become a partner of the Social Development Network, and an implementation proposal has recently been brought forward to the Council for an Ontario Information Infrastructure. [e-mail ac900@freenet.carleton.ca for a copy of the feasibility report]. The E-Connections e-mail design has an emphasis on developing infrastructure and applications for supporting strong security, and using encryption and digital signature technologies to ensure the privacy and authenticity of communication. This requirement is based on the recent experiences of organizations currently using the Internet and a clear recognition of the confidential nature of many activities of organizations within the non-profit sector. In particular, many women's groups deal with issues of a very sensitive nature, i.e., woman abuse, sexual assault, incest and child abuse, and the need for safe and secure security on computer networks is of paramount concern for the women's sector. Women's groups in Ontario are varied in both focus and scope. They include, for example: shelters for battered women; hostels for homeless women; telephone crisis lines and rape crisis centres; education and political advocacy agencies; counselling and referral agencies; community centres and community organizations; women's agencies serving particular cultural groups; student associations, and research centres; professional organizations (teachers, scientists, etc.); drop-ins;women's health organizations; agencies serving disabled women; legal advocacy organizations; social and arts organizations; housing advocacy groups; self-help organizations; business associations; native women's organizations; unions; publications and publishing; childcare organizations. Domestication of Cyberspace The creation of public access network sites in community centres and public libraries will be a necessary requisite to meet universal service goals (see Skrzeszewski, et.al., March 1995). However, true access and ubiquity will not be attained until networked technology is "easily" and economically brought into the home. And, such domestic ubiquity will significantly increase women's access to the information infrastructure. There is a prevailing social discourse now surrounding the information highway, as reflected in advertising, the media, and in some commercial applications, that situates networking technology within the domestic sphere. A cursory examination of current advertising in popular computing magazines reveals the same theme: white, nuclear families gathered around the new `electronic highway' hearth. Indeed, the discursive strategies used to debate the new `interactive' technologies are surprisingly the same as those used to discuss the introduction of television into the post-war economy and new suburban landscape, where television came to be seen as the "window onto the world", and spectatorship became privatized and domesticated. It was also a time for the entrenchment of women within the domestic arena, the proliferation of the nuclear family sensibility amidst cold-war rhetoric, and the burgeoning spread of single-family homes in the new Levittowns. (Spigel, 1992). So, the introduction of Bob, Microsoft's new `social interface', replete with a `back to the gee-whiz 50's' ad campaign, smackingly redolent of life lived high-on-one- income, should come as no surprise. (Although I know that Bob has to be one of the most ubiquitous American names for men, I can't help but think that it stands for `BIll's Our Boss'...) As John December wrote about the concept of Bob, "we need to give people Net information literacy as well as Net social skills to uncover the brilliance of other minds. I'm worried that Bob is a commodity that is a quick fix to this. I'm worried that Bob is a trend toward computerizing socialization rather than socializing computing" (December, 1995; see also Gurak, 1995). Recent feminist perspectives on technology stress the social context of technology where the importance of the various and heterogeneous social factors in the shaping of technological design, change, and diffusion, and the interrelatedness of the work, lives, and status of the producers and consumers are explored. This research agenda concentrates on the effects of society on technology, rather than just the effects of technology on society. Wajcman (1991) demonstrates that political choices are integral in the very implementation and design of technologies. For instance, in her discussion of domestic technology, she urges an analysis, not only at the design level of specific technologies, but also at its location within both the public and private spheres. How have the designers of domestic technologies structured their tools around gender assumptions? We need to ask the same about networked technologies. How does this technology effect social relationships? How are humans shaping this technology? How are technologies gendered? There needs to be a focus on the user, and studies of technology on the everyday lives and work practices of citizens. For instance, in speculating on the advent of the `smart home' and `wired cities', we need to consider howl the incursion of various innovative networked technologies into the home will effect family structure and community life. In the design of such `smart' homes, are women considered a relevant social group by the designers, architects, and technologists? Berg (1994b, 167) poses three interrelated questions: 1) what material appliances are actually in the making today?; 2) what kind of household activities are the new artefacts or appliances meant for?-is housework taken into consideration in the design process?; 3) who are the consumers the designers see as their target group? _Conclusion: Who Is Charting the Information Highway?_ Certainly the current realities and prognostications of the information infrastructure highlight the need to reconceptualize public interest perspectives and reevaluate the role of such technologies in participatory democracy. For instance, at a minimum, these policies should: --ensure that a heterogeneous public is represented in policy discussions, so that the perspectives of those groups in society that may be affected by the introduction and deployment of new technologies are consulted; --research the needs of diverse user communities to ascertain what essential services are for social service and community development delivery; --research access issues as related to user interface; --research vital policy issues related to privacy, copyright, and intellectual property; --guarantee that the public has facilitated access to the existing public information services while the transition to the electronic medium is underway; --ensure that public education and information programs related to the new electronic networks is provided for the public at large. Public policy statements on `universal access' to the information infrastructure, to date, have not explicitly addressed the gender disparity. An exception is the Coalition for Public Information, an initiative of the Ontario Library Association, which has, through a series of public consultations, formulated, "Future-Knowledge: a public policy framework for the information highway". One of their principles under "Universal Access and Ubiquity" is: Gender Issues Women are still under-represented in almost every aspect of computer culture, from programming, to product design, to use of the information infrastructure. The Coalition encourages the development of educational software and training material which is gender-sensitive, takes into account gender differences in learning styles, and avoids sex stereotyping. The Coalition recommends the development of online gender issue information services. Such services could includes listings of technology training and applications opportunities for women. The Coalition recommends the development of on-line harassment guidelines which would govern the use of the Internet by everyone who receives an Internet account. These guidelines would also include grievance procedures for complaints of on-line sexual harassment (Skrzeszewski, Cubberley, 1995, 9-10). Many public interest groups and activists are calling for the continuance and nurturance of a public information lane on the `info highway'. Women must be involved in this public lane. As Mark Surman wrote in his submission to the CRTC, "If Canada is to maintain a well rounded communications system, enhance its global competitiveness and promote the opportunities for public-self expression which are essential to the health of a democracy, the Commission must include provisions for a public lane as it writes the regulation that will define Canada's information highway" (Surman, 1995). Ursula Franklin has written that women's greatest contribution to the current technological landscape lies in their potential to change the present structure by "understanding, critiquing, and changing the very parameters that have kept women away from technology" (Franklin, 1990, 104). Correspondence with women and women's organizations has revealed that women are excited about the potential for women to actively and constructively use computer networking technology to organize electronically, create new communities of interest, and to solidify existing communities. Access to computers and the Internet is one of the major barriers right now. Perhaps what is needed is to coordinate nation-wide efforts, particularly with respect to initiatives to provide training, access to hardware and software, and to support the development of content on community networks, such as compiling local resources of interest. Part 3: what are the most appropriate technological and public policy means to provide ubiquitous residential access to the Internet at an affordable rate? _Other reading and resources_ Balka, Ellen and Laurel Doucette. The Accessibility of Computers To Organizations Serving Women in the Province of Newfoundland: Preliminary Study Results. _Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture_ Special Issue on Gender Issues in Computer Networking", July 26, 1994. [URL:http://www.inform.umd.edu/Educational_Resources/Academi cResourcesByTopic/WomensStudies/Computing/Articles+ResearchP apers/ArachnetJournal/balka] Berg, Anne Jorunn. -Technological Flexibility: bringing gender into technology (or was it the other way around?), pp. 94-110 in _Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe_, ed. Cynthia Cockburn and Ruza Furst Dilic. Buckingham; Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994. -A Gendered Socio-Technical Construction: the smart home, pp. 165-180 in _Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe_, ed. Cynthia Cockburn and Ruza Furst Dilic. Buckingham; Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994. December, John. Searching for Bob. _Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine_, vol.2, n.2 (February 1, 1995): 9. [URL: http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1995/feb/editorial.html] Ebben, Maureen; Kramarae, Cheris. Women and Information technologies: creating a cyberspace of our own, pp. 15-27 in _Women, Information Technology, & Scholarship_, Center for Advanced Study, Champaign-Urbana, University of Illinois, 1993. Fischer, Claude S. _America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940_. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Franklin, Ursula. _The Real World of Technology_. Montreal, Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1990 Gurak, Laura J. On `Bob', `Thomas', and Other New Friends: Gender in Cyberspace._Computer-Mediated Computer Magazine_, vol. 2, n. 2 (February 1, 1995): 12. [URL: http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1995/feb/last.html] Martin, Michelle. _"Hello, Central?": gender, technology, and culture in the formation of telephone systems_. Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991. Morgall, Janine Marie. _Technology Assessment: a feminist perspective_. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Morra, Bernadette. Beker Blasts Into Cyberspace with Internet Fashion[Fashion Notebook Column]. _Toronto Star_ (April 13, 1995): D3. Moyal, Ann. The gendered use of the telephone: a Australian case study. _Media, Culture and Society_ v.14 (1992):51-72. Rakow, Lana F. _Gender on the Line: women, the telephone, and community life_. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Rheingold, Howard. _The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier_. Reading, MA; Addison-Wesley, 1993. Shade, Leslie Regan. -Being Digital, and Domestically Challenged: a gendered perspective on access. A discussion paper prepared for "Bridging the Gap": urban access to information technology. A CIAC/Industry Canada Invitational Workshop in conjunction with IHAC Working Group on Access & Social Impact, March 9- 11, 1994, Toronto. [available on NCF: telnet freenet.carleton.ca, type go access, menu 12: papers...] -Gender Issues in Computer Networking, pp. 91-105 in _Women, Work, Computerization: breaking old boundaries, building new forms_. Edited Adam, et.al. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1994. -Is Sisterhood Virtual: women on the electronic frontier. _Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, Series VI, Vol. V (1994). -Introduction to Guest-Edited Issue of "Gender Issues in Computer Networking", _Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture_, v.2, n.3, (July 26, 1994). -Whither The Public Interest?: Response to first round submissions in the CRTC Information highway policy consultation, February 12, 1995. Skrzeszewski, Stan; Maureen Cubberley. _Future Knowledge: The Report: A Public-Policy Framework for the Information Highway_. Toronto: The Coalition for Public Information/The Ontario Library Association, 1995. Skrzeszewski, Stan, et.al. _Canada's Public Libraries and the Information Highway: A Report Prepared for Industry Canada_. Toronto: The Coalition for Public Information/The Ontario Library Association, March 28, 1995. Spigel, Lynn. _Make Room for TV: television and the family ideal in postwar America_. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. See also review Women in Television, Leslie Regan Shade, _Postmodern Culture_, v.3, n.3 (May 1993).URL: gopher://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:80/hGET%20/pmc/issue .593/review-3.593 Surman, Mark. Cyber-Feminists on the Net. _ThisMagazine_ (March/April 1995):9. Surman, Mark. The Electronic Commons: Community Television and Canada's Information Highway, and Visions of Public Space on the Information Highway: Responses to first round submissions in the CRTC infohighway policy consultation.Submitted in accordance with CRTC Public Notice 1994-130, (January/February 1995). Tamosaitis, Nancy. Why Don't Women Log On? _ComputerLife_ (February 1995):139. Tillotson, Joy; Joan Cherry; and Marshall Clinton. Internet Use Through the University of Toronto Library: Demographics, Destinations, and Users' Reactions. Forthcoming, _Information Technology and Libraries_, September 1995. Wajcman, Judy. _Feminism Confronts Technology_. Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1991.