Information Society Watch

2005, Michelle Wright, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies

Race and gender take on a number of different forms when they intersect with technology, although most of those permutations resemble their "real time" counterparts, where atavistic attitudes and practices exist alongside progressive views and activities. This paper engages the topic through three different venues: the current discourse on race and technology (the digital divide), the experiences of black women who work in technology, and the figuration of race and gender on the web. The overarching question that links these three different sections is whether black women can find a "room of their own," as it were, in cyberspace. Those scholars who advocate understanding the African diaspora as a counterpoint to the exclusionary organising logic of nationalism need to engage with the Internet; if not, they allow this space to remain largely heteropatriarchal (Adapted from author).

Click here for the complete article