CyberFeminism
- girlupshine
- Nov 7, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 8, 2021
What is cyberfeminism? Is it a mere comeback for “common” feminism or does it hold its significance? how is feminism related to cyberfeminism? What is the role of technology in this? A few questions will be answered in this article.
Cyberfeminism is one of the most conveniently avoided topics to discuss. To get a deeper insight into what cyberfeminism is and how it increases the gender gap, a general understanding of cyberspace and relevant technology is helpful.
Internet is the crux of the world today. Everything seems impossible without access to the internet, be it communication, career opportunities, business, and whatnot. cyberspace pretty much refers to this, it allows users across the world to access the internet and facilitate online communication and other internet-related activities. In short, it is everything related to the internet and its effective usage.
Assuming the internet to be cyberspace is one of the biggest misconceptions. Internet is a set of networks that allows online communication whereas cyberspace is the information world created by the internet. Hence, it is inappropriate to use these terms interchangeably. There are many terms related to this, like, cybersecurity, with growing concern for the privacy of data, cybersecurity refers to using technology and cyberspace without the fear of being stalked and being able to protect data since we know data is the most precious asset for both users and hackers.
With this being said, we arrive at our original question, “what is Cyberfeminism”?
The term cyberfeminism was coined around the 1990s to describe the work of women and feminists in the domain of the internet and everything related to it, like cyberspace. it refers to the point that women too can take part in shaping, modeling, and re-structuring the future of cyberspace. The technology gap is another way of representing the gender gap .cyberfeminism also says that women across the world are capable of utilizing technology and the internet in a much fruitful way rather than just using it for shopping purposes.
It tends to break many stereotypes including “women cannot handle technology”, “technology is made by men for men”,” technology is an all-boys club” and many more. These stereotypes are discriminating women from exploring cyberspace and restricting them from making most of it. There may be various approaches in defining cyberfeminism, but the end goal of all the voices remains the same. It urges the fact that men and women should both be equally involved in enhancing and designing the use of cyberspace.
Like any other domain, cyberspace is also a field in which we come across gender gap and gender discrimination, women are either not allowed to access cyberspace or they fall prey to the harmful side effects of cyberspace that is lack of privacy which will be discussed further in this article.
Data security involves securing everything we share via the internet, it could be pictures, text, voice messages, video files, the money we pay via transactions, and many more. Cybersecurity is a branch of cyberspace that deals with providing and ensuring safety to our data.
This makes us question “how is cyberfeminism related to the privacy of women and what is its take on feminism”?
Before answering this question let us understand the fact that any sort of inequality in nature is due to the dominance of one and the inferiority of the other.
In the era of technology and the internet, though men and women are equally exposed to the harmful effects of cyberspace, women are particularly vulnerable to privacy problems because they are wrongly perceived as inferiors and safe targets. their voice is believed to be unheard, their problems are believed to be not addressed and acknowledged.
In short, the complex gendered social norms of accessibility and inaccessibility found in the real world are also found in the cyber world. It is sad yet true that there is a privacy breach for women everywhere, the outside world and also the online world.
I would like to conclude by saying that discrimination and gender inequality remains to be an issue unless addressed perfectly. Any issue can be acknowledged correctly if it is solved contemporarily. Technology and cyberspace are convenient and suitable platforms for breaking stereotypes and building a gender-equal society. It is also a smart way to compete with male counterparts and prove the worth of women in the field of technology.
~ Sai Pallavi
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Informative.