<nettime> Feminist Info Critics?

[John Hopkins <hopkins@iex.net>]

       (I) Where have all the feminist information
                  technology critics gone?
       They've been seduced by the potential of the
                World Wide Web everywhere...
    When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

                  by Ellen Balka, Ph.D.
      Associate Professor, School of Communication
             Simon Fraser University, Canada

    As a young feminist in the 1970s, I became fascinated by
the possibilities of making the world a better place by
making conscious choices about the technologies that filled
my daily life, and the lives of other women and men. I
became involved with a number of grassroots and change-
oriented initiatives through the years that were aimed at
challenging the adage that technological change will mean
unmitigated progress for women. For many years I was filled
with the sort of hope that accompanies the possibility of
emancipatory change; I engaged in a range of activities
aimed at assessing the impact on women of information
technologies (everything from home computers to bar code
scanners used in grocery store check outs), and I worked
towards mitigating the potentially adverse effects of new
computer technologies on women.

    Now, some twenty years after my initial entry into
critical debates about women, technology and social change,
I find myself aware of a palpable difference in how
feminists are responding to the increasingly ubiquitous
computerization of our lives. It seems that the possibility
of conducting sex-role impact statements (advocated by long-
time U.S. community activist and feminist technology critic
Judy Smith) or feminist technology assessments (advocated by
the American Association of University Women in the early
1980s) about the impacts of information technology on women
have given way to cyber-feminism.

    For example, living in Canada I note that the
introduction of new technologies poised to change the face
of women's work (such as electronic airline tickets) now
barely evokes a response from Canadian unions that two
decades ago fought hard won battles for 'new technology'
clauses in collective agreements. I find myself searching
for meaningful forms of technology activism at a time when
activism all too frequently means either fighting for access
to technology or sending electronic petitions to one's
electronic distribution list, rather than asking questions
about how much technology we want in our lives, and how we
want both our personal and work lives organized in relation
to new technologies.

    I wonder where all the feminist information technology
critics have gone, and I fear the answer is that we've been
seduced by the potential of the World Wide Web.

    As a culture, we tend to have fairly simplistic views of
technology and social change. Although we interact with
technology from the moment our alarms ring in the morning to
when we turn out our lights at night, for the most part,
most people take technology for granted. As a culture, we
tend to think of technology as inevitable progress or
inevitable doom. We frequently combine one of these views
with the notion that technology is neutral and value free
and that the effects of technology reflect only the
circumstances of use.[1] Though some of us might concede
that a culture's values are reflected in the technologies it
produces, most of us can't figure out how to intervene in
the processes through which social biases are imprinted on
technological systems.

    Our ability to think critically about technology seems
to reflect both the technologies of the time, and issues
that are obviously evident from the use of those
technologies. Social movements may aid us in developing
critiques of technologies, and moving those critiques into
mainstream discourse, as was the case with the environmental
movement of the 60s and 70s (which supported early debates
about the scale of technological development and the need to
conduct environmental impact statements), or the women's
movement of the 60s and 70s (which encouraged us to question
the nature of women's paid and unpaid work, and focused our
attention on how technology contributed to our experiences
as women workers).

    Although women's movements of the 60s and 70s
contributed to the growth of feminist critiques of
male-biased health research, feminist critiques of new
reproductive technologies took form only in the ethical
turmoil that followed the birth of the first test tube
babies (in spite of the publication of a well read and
controversial feminist article about new forms of
reproduction in the early 1970s). Unlike feminist
environmental activism, and, perhaps to a lesser degree,
information technology activism, activism aimed at
regulation of new reproductive technology has only partially
succeeded.[2]

    However, popular critiques of technology seem to be
bound by what is immediately obvious as a result of using
and watching the use of new technologies. For many
feminists, the environmental and women's movements of the
60s and 70s brought us face to face with alternative energy
technologies at the same time that we were critically
examining our paid and unpaid labour. Women who made choices
to use alternative technologies did so at a time when
debates about the nature of women's work were hard to miss.

    The convergence of social movements in the 1960s and 70s
supported feminist activists as they both utilized and
criticized the technologies of the times. Many women were
actively engaged with the creation and use of alternative
energy technologies, and the activism of the time reflected
that engagement. Our strategies reflected the level of
engagement we had with the technology, and the insights that
came from that engagement. We were able to see that along
with the beautiful vistas of rural life came the constant
call of food-producing vegetable gardens upon which our
families depended. Our interaction with the technologies of
the time allowed us to see both the possibilities of our
choices, and their limitations. Although some technologies
(such as transportation systems and architecture) were at
times the focal point of feminist critique, these
technologies became the topic of only limited feminist
debate, perhaps because the effects of transportation
infrastructure or building design on women were far more
difficult to discern through casual observation.

    In contrast, in the early 1980s feminist debates about
technology revolved increasingly around the impact of
information technologies on women. As computerization of
large organizations began, we were able to see that the new
technology was being deployed in sectors of the labour force
dominated by women. Our debates centered around the threats
of job loss and declines in the quality of our work, related
to increased automation of tasks. For the most part, those
of us taking a critical stance towards technology in the 80s
saw it as a threat.

    Some of us were lucky enough to gain exposure to
Scandinavian concepts of participatory design in the 1980s
(where workers and management work together to redesign
workplace technologies to reflect democratic ideals and
preserve skill content of jobs), which has kept the flame of
hope alive as the rate of computerization of our lives has
increased. Government funding in Canada, where I live,
provided an impetus for trade unions and academics to
collaborate in looking at the impacts of new technology on
work, which led to a vibrant community of feminist
information technology critics here in the late 1980s. We
sought ways to influence the design of new technologies, in
efforts to create more convivial outcomes while we
encouraged our constituent groups to develop in-house
expertise about the workings of the new technology. We
dreamt of a world in which 'science for the people' was
replaced by a 'science by the people.'

    Fast forward (and change was fast!) to 1993 and the
emergence of the World Wide Web. A significant proportion of
organizations -- including change-oriented women's
organizations -- had computers in-house. The emergence of
the World Wide Web occurred at a time of cuts in funding of
voluntary sector groups in Canada. (Unlike the United
States, Canada has a women's movement that receives ample
funding from the state.) The new Web-ready computers became
the new Messiah as voluntary sector groups (including
women's groups) saw the communication potential of the World
Wide Web as a solution to the economic costs of organizing.
Earlier enthusiasm about women workers and activists alike
participating in the development of new technologies was
replaced by calls for access to off the shelf systems that
were supposed to meet our needs.

    As Web-ready computers became more ubiquitous, feminists
ranging from Sadie Plant to Dale Spender urged us
(uncritically) to take advantage of the new technology,
which they suggest, will extend women's superior (and for
Plant, perhaps inherent) ability to communicate. Their call
to embrace the new machines has been fueled by Web Grrrls
(computer savvy women with attitude) who, enthralled with
their entry into the previously boys-only domain of
machines, are blind to the constraints many of their sisters
still face in securing decent jobs and equal wages for the
work they do alongside men.

    As the 1990s draw to a close, post-feminist discourses
that suggest women have achieved equality on every front,
combined with the discourse of grrrls which attempts to
distance itself from earlier feminist rhetoric (which they
argue saw women as victims) finds many women sitting alone
in front of Web-ready computers. As e-mail emerges as a new
arena for activism, many of us who either must use e-mail
for work or have been on-line for some time (and thus
already have extensive electronic networks) find it
increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff
in our in-boxes. Just as we saw information technology as an
absolute threat to jobs in the 80s, it is now seen as the
absolute savior in the 90s -- a notion spread through the
pervasiveness of the technology itself, which is used to
spread the hype, making it more difficult to refute.

    As economic globalization has overtaken social
globalization, we communicate electronically with people
from around the globe, but not our next door neighbors.
Where once we went to seemingly endless collective meetings,
got a bit of exercise at the occasional demonstration and
shared the occasional pot-luck meal, we now read seemingly
endless on-line postings. The machines on our desks require
more and more of our time, while fitting into a larger
system of increased expectations that has led to an
increased cadence of work. Just as the evident disadvantages
of technology in the 80s left us for the most part
disengaged with the technology in our criticism of it as
threat, the evident advantages of the Web now lull us into
an equally uncritical stance.

    Where have all the feminist information technology
critics gone? We've gone on-line everywhere the technology
has been available to do so, and in our enthusiasm for the
technology, have lost that critical feminist perspective.
What do we do about it? Though not large in number, there
are several organizations engaged in critical perspectives
of technology. Among them are:

    o  The Institute for Women and Technology
<http://www.iwt.org/> exists to increase the impact of women
on technology, in education, design, development, deployment
and policy. To increase the positive impact of technology on
the lives of all women. To help communities, industry,
education and governments accelerate and benefit from these
increases.

    o  The Once and Future Action Network (OFAN)
<http://www.wigsat.org/ofan/ofan.html> is an international
consortium of gender, science and technology organizations
which calls attention to women's contribution to
people-centered and environmentally sustainable approaches
to science and technology by raising public awareness,
undertaking advocacy and lobbying activities at
international policy forums and mounting visual and
interactive demonstrations and presentations on women,
science and technology around the world

    o  Women in Global Science and Technology (WIGSAT)
listservs
<http://gstgateway.wigsat.org/internet/listservs.html>
include international mailing lists on gender, science and
technology (WIGSAT-L); and Women and Globalization List
(Global-L) as well as collected women-related science and
technology sites.


*****

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:  Ellen Balka is a long time feminist
technology activist and critic. She is currently searching
for meaningful ways to influence technological change from a
feminist perspective and would welcome discussion of this
topic (and other topics) on the Loka Institute's
pol-sci-tech listserv. (To subscribe, just send a blank
message to  <pol-sci-tech-subscribe@igc.topica.com>.)  Ellen
teaches in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser
University, which is located in Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada. In spite of her cautions about on-line activism, she
can be reached by e-mail at <ebalka@sfu.ca>. Her Web site
can be accessed at <http://www.sfu.ca/~ebalka>.


*****

ENDNOTES

[1]. For a discussion of these views, see C. G. Bush, "Women
and the assessment of technology: To Think, to be; to
unthink, to free," in J. Rothschild, (Ed.), _Machina ex dea:
Feminist perspectives on technology_ (New York: Pergamon,
1983), pp. 150-171. For a discussion of the extent to which
these views are prevalent, see E. Balka, "Feminist
Technology Assessment: Reflections on Theory and Practice,"
_Atlantis_, Vol. 22 , No. 2, (Spring 1998), pp. 112-122.

[2]. In Canada, a Royal Commission on New Reproductive
Technologies was created in 1989 to assess the impact of new
reproductive technologies on society. Canadian Royal
Commissions are a mechanism for public participation as well
as a vehicle for the collection of expert advice about
matters under consideration. In the case of the Royal
Commission on New Reproductive Technology, the Commission's
procedures were widely criticized and the report was
delivered several years late. The Commission's
recommendations were set aside, and have yet to be
legislated through government policies.

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