Feminist Internet: A Reality Check

In the world today, especially in the virtual world, Internet has made a transition from a 'growing network' to a near-omnipotent medium. It has made its presence through PCs, laptops, televisions and mobiles. Its manifold functions have made sure that beyond its original status as an ICT item it becomes an everyday companion. But questions remain whether behind its astonishing growth there lies strains of various biases based on age, region, ethnicity, nationality, and not the least, gender. Feminists, cyber-feminists in particular, have long argued that the democratizing potential of Internet has to be harnessed by not only removing its gender bias but aggressively making it feminist. This is the sense of serving the specific interests of women by appropriating the radical potential of the Internet.

Let us remember that with the passing of more than two decades of the twenty-first century, the world seems to be highly divided in this case. While in the US, the number of men and women having online presence is equal, and in the Scandinavian countries it is as good, in the UK only one woman against two men use the Internet. In the non-western developing states, it is far worse with steep gender bias marking the Net. As a whole, the ICT scenario in the world is grossly discriminatory against women because women users are much less in number than men.

If the Internet would conform to the feminist argument, the world would have been much better? It is a fact that women constitute half of humankind and with their history as 'laggards' in the use of the Internet, they remain deprived of much of the advantages that it offers. The advantages are not just technological. They are heavily economic and also social, cultural, and commercial. The ethical question is why women should be deprived of its potential just because they are of the other gender.

It is not an illogical demand. In the face of ever steeped patriarchy, it is an ethical issue. Feminists have long argued that women are being compelled to remain beyond the orbit of the Net forcefully by the patriarchal forces. It has also been seen that with the growing use of the Internet by women in some developed western societies, technology is playing a key role in transformation of the patriarchal elements existing in those societies. Side by side, the various practices of male dominance are being challenged and the Net is facilitating the struggle of women to bring it closer to women and make it acquire a 'feminine' character. To reiterate, the trend still escapes the non-western world.

There is little doubt that a feminist Internet can contribute immensely, structurally and culturally, in providing a new gender scenario by breaking existing blocks, which prevent access of women to the new technology. It will help the fight against the huge instances of pornography, sexual harassment and trolling of women in the virtual world but will also result in a tough fight against all these in the real world itself. Wider and appropriate use of technology by women would certainly lead to a better world. But at the same time, the roadmap must include the following steps: first, the greater use of the Internet by women should not imply women would only act as consumers and/or shoppers. It must give equal status to women as creative users of the World Wide Web. Second, the whole endeavour in feminizing the Internet should include men and not be a 'women only' process. Some feminist Internet should not be an excessively utopian vision marked by reverse gender bias. The Digital Divide can be challenged by firming up the Internet in the Feminist way but in such a challenge men also have to be active. In other words, the feminist Internet is only as good as a feminist society in the inclusive sense of the term.