"Nobody Lives Only in Cyberspace": Gendered Subjectivities and Domestic Use of the Internet

Abstract

Many academic accounts of the social impact of the Internet tend to consider users of this technology as being either online or offline, but rarely as being both. I argue in this paper that such an approach is untenable in attempting to understand the gender dynamics of Internet use, especially as the domestic environment is becoming an increasingly important locus for this use. I maintain that to understand fully how men and women use and relate to the Internet it is important to examine the ever-expanding, but under-theorized, arena of Internet use within the home. I suggest that addressing the impact on Internet use of the gender processes within households, the impact of these relations as they are negotiated with other aspects of identity (class, race, sexuality, age, education, [dis]ability, employment) and their cumulative effect on domestic arrangements, disposable income and access to technologies, would provide a worthwhile strategy for increasing understanding of the gender dynamics of the technology. It seems likely that considerable differences exist between women and men in both what they use the Internet for at home and how it fits with their offline activities, and I conclude that it is only thorough investigation of the online and the offline together, i.e. situating users firmly in the context of their use, that will illuminate how this works in practice in people's everyday lives.

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