Women on the Internet

England

Fem Add-On

The Internet as a Tool for Feminist Empowerment vs. Degradation: A Battle in Cyber-Space

Erin England

Dr. Louise Edmonds

The development of women's use of the Internet has felt like a Movement. Up until the present year of 2011, it has been full of supportive acts and discussions. Women have been willing to share their ideas, experience and time with others whom they only know online. There is goodwill and growth between women. This virtual gathering together in small and not so small groups online shows a range of possibilities for change. There is the capacity for sharing ideas for organizing and action, which some groundbreaking women have been exploring. More women are joining in and creating their own activities. The work of feminists of the past thirty years is often the foundation from which online feminists build. Dialogue, encouraging others, listening, sharing, and dealing with conflict are all opportunities present in the online world. Many of the premises and assumptions made in online interactions are part of the continuity of other feminist work. The Internet opens up the opportunity for feminists to communicate on a scale previously impossible, adding variety and lucidity in an open format. Feminists who would previously never have had the opportunity to work together in real life can meet in an online setting and pave new ways toward accomplishment and change drawing upon the theories of old. Cyber-feminism has enabled a new generation of women to empower, help, and protect each other. Conversely, within the Internet also exists the struggle to maintain one's female identity in a structure dominated by unregulated and unapologetic patriarchy through technological advancements such as Photoshop and pornography that seek to demean and diminish the progress cyber-feminists seek to make in apposing hegemony.

The Internet speeds our communications, shares information on a large scale, and gives immediacy to what we do. It can make our work more transparent and increase our accountability to women. Using the Internet means that we have to rethink our work to see how being online can enhance what we do. We may decide that using email between organizations is adequate, maybe supplemented by a mailing list or two (Wajcman, 2010). Even this step means looking at whom traditionally collects and processes the mail, as well as how everyone shares information. We can use this medium, this tool, to communicate with each other and to connect over the issues that are closest to our hearts. We can reach beyond the boundaries of our neighborhoods to exchange information and experiences with our communities of interest, and, at the same time, bring global resources to our local communities. According to some scholarship on the subject, it is in the networks that such communications and communities can create and come to represent that real change can be effected, meaning that the Internet might be conducive to the progression of real social change not simply in allowing individuals and organizations to achieve greater levels of communication, but also by increasing the number o relationships and channels in or through which communication can take place (Castells, n.d.).

There is much more that we can do with the Internet such as influencing government, demanding accountability and promoting democratic participation. The point is to assess the possibilities and experiment in using it for our own purposes, while sharing our developing skills and experience with more women (Wajcman, 2010). The voice women gain from getting online has begun to show in the range of issues, communication and information appearing both online and offline. It has been suggested by research that offline attitudinal changes and progress in achieving or at least approaching the goals of various feminisms in both online and offline settings has been achieved through the development of cyberfeminism; although the term resisted (and continues to resist) strict definition, it is clear that cyberfeminism is more than simply the same feminisms through new media, but represents a fundamentally different outgrowth or shift in the understanding and application of feminism (Wilding, n.d.). Women and women's groups who have not always been widely supported are effectively using the Internet as a place to be heard, to listen, to be included and to make alliances, and cyberfeminism includes the increased control, directional capabilities, and enhanced power foundation that the Internet provides in a manner that shifts the essential nature of the struggle of feminism, in some aspects (Wilding, n.d.). The voices of lesbian women, women of color, immigrant women, young women, and women with disabilities are online and talking to each other (Senjen and Guthrey 2006).