ERIC Number: ED391493
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1995
Pages: 10
Abstractor: N/A
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Women in Cyberspace.
Lucek, Linda E.
Although the early settlements in cyberspace have tended to be male-dominated, diversity does exist on the Internet. In fact, a 1994-95 study revealed that women comprise 34% of Internet users. Feminism, as it came of age in the 1960s, often equated technoscience with the Vietnam War and with forces in opposition to nature and life. Postmodern feminist theory of the 1980s, on the other hand, can be called technomania rather than technophobia because it extolled the notion that technology was creating a race of cyborgs. More recent schools of thought have encouraged a reconciliation of those two views and remembrance of how technology has been used in the past to oppress those who had no access to it. Feminist scholarship should heed emerging literature which emphasizes the benefits of actual reality over virtual reality and cautions against the loss of intimacy in electronic culture, but at the same time, it should devote time to assembling a profile of the diverse female representation in cyberspace and uncovering the wealth of World Wide Web resources of interest to women. These resources include women's resource pages, feminist activism resources, organizational and professional homepages, events calendars, networked support groups and research projects, online newsletters and magazines, listservs, interactive forums, individual home pages, and virtual clubs. The World Wide Web is conducive to the easy formation of associations and has spawned some that might otherwise not exist. Individuals who might never have had opportunity to share "minority" feelings or hobbies with other like-minded people suddenly have a global culture pool to draw from. An appendix offers uniform resource locators (URLs) for 11 relevant world wide web sites. (Contains 15 references.) (BEW)
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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