Genbot’s Weblog

During the various deliberations surrounding the development of the WSIS Draft Principles, many women’s groups were adamant that Paragraph 11A, which dealt with gender equity, be included. In September 2003 a t-shirt campaign was initiated by the NGO Gender Srategies Working Group. As you can see by the photo above, the t-shirts contained the message “WSIS has a missing paragraph” (on the front) and the text of paragraph 11A (on the back). They were worn by several NGO delegates.

Add: New Para 11A
A focus on the gender dimensions of ICT is essential not only for preventing an adverse impact of the digital revolution on gender equality or the perpetuation of existing inequalities and discrimination, but also for enhancing women’s equitable access to the benefits of ICT and to ensure that they can become a central tool for the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality. We therefore resolve to establish policies, programmes and projects that consider, identify and analyse the gender differences and inequalities in the access to and use of ICT and that these are fully addressed
(Language proposed by Canada during the WSIS Intersessional Meeting in Paris from 15-18 July 2003)

On WSIS Gender Caucus at Tunis in November 2005:
http://shade.flinknet.com/archives/000615.html
(some links may be defunct)

There’s been a bit of academic writing on gender and WSIS, see scholar.google.com

The Phantom of the Operator, a film by Caroline Martel…

The 20th Century had its invisible workforce: telephone operators. Not just “voices with a smile”, they starred in managerial dreams of infinite progress. LE FANTÔME DE L’OPÉRATRICE reveals their fate in a unique montage film crafted from 150 rarely-seen industrial, publicity and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989. The voice of celebrated Quebec actress PASCALE MONTPETIT accompanies us on this voyage of science and fiction. Director Caroline Martel and her collaborators spent 50 weeks over four years splicing together fantastic remnants from an industrial era into this dreamlike documentary. LE FANTÔME DE L’OPÉRATRICE proposes a fascinating portrait of human society in a technocratic age.

“an enormously imaginative documentary… an hour of non-stop visual and intellectual stimulation.” – VARIETY

Jennifer Light in “When Computers Were Women” in Technology and Culture 40:3 (1999): 455-483 mentions the ‘invisible girls’ responsible for the ENIAC computer. The job of computer programmer was originally classified as female clerical work. The history of women in computing, she also notes, was given short shrift, as official public account about ENIAC in the media neglected to mention ‘the girls’. Ballistics computing was thus feminized, but Post WWIIm it was … back to the kitchen!

Cheris Kramarae wrote a report in 2001 for the American Association of University Women on women and distance education. It was called The Third Shift: Women Learning Online/

Old Stuff

In evaluating women’s relationship to the Internet, one of the more important factors is women’s relationship to paid work. Claims by management gurus and technological pundits that the information infrastructure will create jobs and accelerate the trend towards a knowledge economy replete with lifelong learning opportunities need to be investigated. Particular issues to examine include:

• What jobs are being deskilled by the introduction of computerization and networked communications? For instance, if libraries are being wired, how is this affecting a workforce predominately staffed by women?
• Are women using networked technologies in entrepreneurial ways? Are women significantly involved in the commercial end of networking (i.e. as consultants, owners of businesses, content creators)?
• What are the obstacles (e.g. educational barriers, lack of affordable childcare) facing women who seek to enter and thrive in the high tech fields?

In particular, the impact of telework on women needs to be explored. Oldfield (1991) writes that the triple workload of women teleworkers (paid work, housework, and childcare) creates added stress, dependance on a spouses’ wages, an increased risk of poverty, and isolation. Oldfield suggests that narrow-scope public policy strategies for improving the lives of women teleworkers include ensuring that: homeworkers are guaranteed employee status by union membership; homeworkers are included in a broadening of legislative protection such as through unemployment insurance benefits; and that real-life and virtual networking organizations are created, whose goal would be to reduce home isolation and disseminate public awareness information for teleworkers.

Continue reading →

Old Boys Network The Truth About Cyberfeminism

Cyberfeminism with a Difference Rosi Braidotti , 1996

Cyberfeminism Reading Bodies

Cyberfeminism Art Women journal

Domain Errors: Cyberfeminist Practices, (Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding and Michelle M. Wright).

Women, Art & Technology, ed. Judy Malloy MIT Press, 2003

Mary Flanagan . She is a digital media artist exploring issues related to gender and gaming.

Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture, ed. Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth (MIT Press, 2002).

Anna Couey Restructuring Power: Telecommunications Works Produced by Women.

Rhizomes 4 (2002), Cyberfeminisms

This image is by Técha Noble and from the Geek Girl site from Australia.

An excerpt from Shade (2002).

The original Riot Grrls were a disparate group of punk feminists who published zines and played in bands, such as Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, and Bratmobile. They reclaimed the word girl with their own feminist twist, asserting a more spunky and can-do attitude, combined with a strong political and activist stance. Rosenberg describes Riot Grrls as “loud”, expressing “themselves honestly and straightforwardly” through zines, music, and the spoken word. “Riot Grrl does not shy away from difficult issues and often addressed painful topics such as rape and abuse. Riot Grrl is a call to action, to ‘Revolution Girl-Style Now’. At a time in their lives when girls are taught to be silent, Riot Grrl demands that they scream” (1998 810).

Paper zines, once the mainstay of Riot Grrl communication, have spread to the Internet. Through e-zines, discussion groups, and websites, Riot Grrls “write most often about their days— something small that has upset them or something great that has happened. In that environment, what they create is genuine and accessible. Because the feminism of Riot Grrl is self-determined and grassroots, its greatest power is that it gives girls room to decide for themselves who they are. It provides a viable alternative to the skinny white girls in Seventeen and YM (Young and Modern) magazines.” (ibid. 811).
Nikki Douglas is the editor, publisher, and webmaster of RiotGrrl (www.riotgrrl.com) (“women not scared to be grrls!”) and Girl Gamer , for female video and Internet game players, which highlights game reviews, cheats, hardware reviews, and a “Sound Off” forum. RiotGrrl features RiotGrrl Interact—a conference system on various topics (sex, rants, books-films-TV, Webology, TeenGrrl, Gen-X), and the Feed the Supermodel game, (“as featured in Wired Magazine!”). Jennifer Aniston-Pitt was the supermodel, and she could be fed by clicking on several food combinations: Comida Buena (salad, carrots, vitamins, slimfast, crackers) or Comida Mal (hamburger, stromboli, tiramisu, oreo cheesecake, 16 oz. steak).

–Rosenberg, Jessica and Gitana Garofalo. 1998. Riot grrrl: Revolutions from within. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23(3): 809–841.

A bit late, but nonetheless:

The Cartoon Version of ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’
http://barclaybarrios.com/courses/cyberlit/media/cyborg1.html

You are Cyborg by Hari Kunzru in Wired, Issue 5.02, 1997.

Cyborg Liberation Front by Erik Baard on the Movement for Posthuman Rights, in The Village Voice, July 30-August 5, 2003.

You Gotta Love It! – Cyborg Mommy

The Cyborg Manifesto

Haraway Bibliography from European Graduate School

Donna Haraway’s website at UC-Santa Cruz and Edges and Ecotones: The Worlds of Donna Haraway at UCSC

An Ode to DH

Voice of the Shuttle resources

Merck’s Gardasil is the vaccine that purports to guard against diseases that are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) Types 6, 11, 16, and 18. It’s been greeted by immense relief from soccer moms and often mandated vaccinations in school boards across North America, moral panics by religious groups who feel the vaccine will encourage non-abstinence, and cautious skepticism by some feminists and medical experts.

The marketing is pretty interesting, ‘One Less’ serving as the slogan for the print and television ads which feature a multicultural cast of young, spirited, sporty, funky and feisty young women:

Then there’s the ‘Tell Someone’ Merck site.

Students tell me that Merck supplied the ‘back to school’ Concordia student package that features the usual razors, condoms (I assume?) , agendas and discount coupons, with a backpack – I’ve seen a woman in the metro with one (it’s too small to hold anything substantial, and the word Gardasil is on it – I think a pale grey color). You can even create and send e-cards about Gardasil thanks to American Greetings! (see http://www.gardasil.com/share-information.html)

From Judith Siers-Poisson at PR Watch bout the politics, profits and PR of cervical cancer: http://prwatch.org/node/6186

In nearly every state in the U.S. there is a legislative push to make the HPV vaccine mandatory for middle school aged girls, with catch-up clauses to cover girls that have passed that age but are not yet sexually active. Given the anxiety of most people about cancer and the number of people infected with HPV, it is not surprising that what is touted as the first vaccine against cancer has been largely greeted with acclaim. But despite having been affected personally, I became concerned by the headlong rush to not only approve the vaccine, but to mandate it for middle-school aged girls. It is also worrisome that a vaccine may give a false sense of security, which could lead to a decline in the very reliable and proven diagnostic tools available, including Pap tests. Decisions affecting millions of young women should not be made lightly, and certainly not without examining the marketing, PR, and profit motives of a corporation like Merck.

From Macleans Magazine: Interview with McGill Professor Abby Lippman about Gardasil:

What’s the goal of spending all this money? When people tell me it’s because we don’t want people to die of cervical cancer, I need to say: “Take a deep breath.” Yes, 400 women may die of cervical cancer this year, and that’s 400 too many. But we do have a few things in place. One, most women [90 per cent] who are affected by the human papillomavirus clear it by themselves in one or two years. So as long as we’re healthy, in good shape, we have good nutrition, we’re not smoking, we’re practicing safer sex and so on, that’s number one.

And, the Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog
http://abstinence.net/blognew/2008/01/24/guard-your-kids-from-gardasil/

HPV is a Sexually Transmitted Disease that can lead to cervical cancer. That is a fact. But how does someone obtain any kind of STD in the first place? In a monogamous relationship, where sex is saved for marriage?

Probably not.

And, in the Sunday NY Times of Feb 24, Vaccinating Boys for Girls’ Sake?

…someone’s missing from this grrlpower tableau.

Ah, that would be Gardasil Boy.

Gardasil Girl’s cancer-related virus? Sexually transmitted. She almost certainly got it from him.

So far, Gardasil is approved just for girls. They can be vaccinated when they are as young as 9, although it’s recommended for 11- and 12-year-olds, before they are sexually active.

As the commercials show, the pitch to Gardasil Girl’s parents doesn’t need to address sex: it’s about protecting their daughter from a cancer.

By 2009, the vaccine could be approved for boys as well. Although Gardasil also protects against genital warts, which are not life-threatening, the primary reason to extend approval to boys would be to slow the rates of cervical cancer. Public health folks charmlessly call this “herd immunity.”

Will parents of sons consent to a three-shot regimen that has been marketed as benefiting girls? How do you pitch that to Gardasil Boy’s parents?

Think altruism. Responsibility. Chivalry, even? Oh, and yes: some explicit details about genital warts and sexual transmission…

I haven’t seen many women talking in/on one…see Feb 22 entry on Men in Khakis and Blue Shirts and Bluetooths

And I mostly observe men talking in/on these things in airports, trains, and city streets near business/financial districts.

From Gizmodo blog: on a Zero Sum/Guerilla Research survey of Bluetooth users in a central London district:

68% of personalised devices were given ‘male’ names, with only 20% allocated a ‘female’ name. Although mobile phone ownership is higher for men than women in the UK, this does not adequately explain such a large discrepancy.

Re tech specifications etc. of Bluetooth see the Wikipedia entry….

What about the name? From the Bluetooth SIG:

“Bluetooth” is from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blatand – or Harold Bluetooth in English. King Blatand was instrumental in uniting warring factions in parts of what is now Norway, Sweden and Denmark – just as Bluetooth technology is designed to allow collaboration between differing industries such as the computing, mobile phone and automotive markets.

But wait. We have a female version:

Bluepearls™ BlueTooth for Women:

Manufactured by ProfitWing Inc., because for women, “size and color matters”:

“We believe women have been slow to adopt Bluetooth headsets largely due to size and weight. This is the first barrier to retail purchases by women. Having a great big-fat-square-black box on our ears as the only option is not going to attract female buyers. Something small, elegant and stylish will motivate us to open our pocket books.” “The BluePearls Life™ series is a perfect complement to the existing BP7G retail product line”, states Wadley.

Color combos include: “Black, Silver and White with nine colored face plates including: Cheetah, Green Swirl, Pretty Pink, Blue Denim, Orange Burst, Zebra, Camouflage, Ruby Red and Midnight Blue”.

So, one can coordinate with one’s outfit AND not get it tangled up in one’s earrings…