Reading #3
The Internet Is a Fine Place for Women
By Chuck Huff
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The Internet has gotten a bad rap for being inhospitable to women. It is made inhospitable in various places by people who are (mostly) thoughtless about the effects of their actions and (sometimes) downright malicious.
But excellent things for women are happening online. The Internet is a communication medium, so it's no surprise that one of its major advantages for women is to connect them with each other or with information they need. Many women are finding forums populated by like-minded others where discussion is frank but supportive. Many women's organizations are now online and providing services and interaction in a way that they could not in the recent past. Many women who felt isolated in their jobs or schooling have been able to find sisters online with whom they can talk about issues of importance to them, plot strategy for their lives, and find connection.
3
To borrow a badly misused cliché, "the net isn't nasty to women, people are." The technology makes it easier for women to talk with each other in a supportive way, but it also provides another channel (and a more anonymous and convenient channel) for sexist rant and harassment. Let's take a mercifully short review of the dismal side of gender online.
4
According to most of the recent surveys of "who is out there," about one third of the folks with accounts that have Internet access are female. But more than 90% of the actual conversation in online forums is done by males. So, though women certainly have a presence online, they do not yet have a strong voice.
5
There have been celebrated cases of "virtual rape" online, where role-playing has gotten out of hand and left people stunned and psychologically abused. Less dramatic, but more frequent are the many stories researchers have documented of unsolicited "come-ons," virtual harassment (in email, "chat" rooms, etc.), unwelcome sexual slurs, and sexual stereotyping women have experienced online. More widespread again are the cases of those who are made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, shut out, ignored, or misunderstood in many of the forums on the Internet. This virtual ostracism of women is not simply innocent play or the rough and tumble of the public forum. It is real, has been carefully documented by researchers, and is based in our culture's systematic devaluation of women, their opinions, abilities, and roles.
6
The standard newspaper article on the Internet favors this admittedly dismal account of gender on the net. These instances of discrimination, harassment, and degradation are serious indicators of the difficulty many women encounter on the Internet. But we need some balance in this story.
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First, there is no singular "net culture." There are many communities and forums, with many different profiles and interaction rules. Some places are hostile to everyone without discrimination, though they may use standard cultural stereotypes to display this hostility. Many are dryly professional though, again, predominantly male. Most corporate sites are scrupulously unbiased and slightly boring. And as I listed earlier, there is a growing number of places designed especially for women, their unique concerns, and the concerns they share with other groups of people. We should recognize this wide diversity in the net, and begin to pay attention to the recent demographic studies that document a changing clientele and culture.
8
Secondly, there is no universal "woman" except the sort of statistical aggregates social science types like me devise in our generalizations. When I speak at conferences, I am invariably approached by women whose experiences of the net are entirely positive, and who wonder why I am even interested in gender issues in online interaction. I also invariably collect from other women additional horror stories of harassment and belligerence.
9
So in answer to the question "Is the net hospitable to women?" we need to answer: "which net?" and "which women?" The answer will depend on the particularities.
10
One thing we can be sure of: the electronic utopia will not be coming to a web site near you. The predictions of a classless online community, a global village, a discrimination-free electronic democracy, are all submerging beneath the reality that people populate the net. People in all their diversity, with all their idiosyncrasies, and with all their prejudices and proclivities. As more women enter the electronic version of the real world, they will find this variety and use their fine good sense to exploit it.
Chuck Huff, "The Internet Is a Fine Place for Women," From Computers and Society December 1997 (page 27). Copyright © 1996, by Charles W. Huff.
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