TechnoCapitalism Meets TechnoFeminism: Women and Technology in a Wireless World

Mastery over technology has long been seen as a key source of power for men, reflected in hierarchies of sexual difference at work and at home. However, in the new digital age, many contemporary feminists surmise that the link between technology and male privilege is finally being severed. While early second-wave feminism stressed how embedded technology is with capitalist and patriarchal relations, cyberfeminism conceives of the virtuality of cyberspace and the Internet as spelling the end of the embodied basis for sex difference and thus liberating for women. This article presents both pessimistic and optimistic perspectives, drawing on the social studies of technology. The technofeminist approach advocated here recognises that the gender-technology relationship is rapidly changing, while emphasising that this is the result of feminist politics and not technology per se.