Merete Lie

Gender in the Information Society: Strategies of Inclusion

Abstract This article reports from a European study on efforts to close a gendered digital divide through inclusion. The authors argue that inclusion is not just a mirror image of exclusion, and that to achieve inclusion, it is not sufficient to curb exclusion mechanisms but to enhance positive measures of inclusion. A variety of inclusion strategies have been studied, the authors concluding that ‘one size does not fit all’. Therefore, to reach a wide audience, a combination of many different strategies is needed. More women users are not sufficient to increase women’s influence on ICT development, however. Particular measures are needed to recruit more women into the ICT profession and to curb marginalization within the profession.

Technology and Masculinity The Case of the Computer

My interest in the connection between technology and masculinity arose from studies of women’s inferior status at work. My question is whether technology in general, or specific technologies, are important to male gender identity. If so, this adds to the understanding of why it is so difficult to make changes in the sexual division of labour, because meddling with the distribution of tools and tasks then means meddling with gender identity. Gender appears in social life in different forms on different societal

On Gender and Things: Reflections on an Exhibition on Gendered Artifacts.

In this paper, we describe an exhibition on gendered artifacts we have organized in the Netherlands and Norway. The major aim of the exhibition was to show the public the ways in which technical objects are inscribed with gender; this in order to make people aware that we live in a technological and gendered culture. Reflecting on our experiences with the exhibition, we discuss the two different approaches to theorizing the gendering of artifacts underlying the Dutch and the Norwegian version of the exhibition: the genderscript approach and the domestication approach. We conclude that the gendering of artifacts can be understood only by representing designers as well as users as active participants in the social construction of artifacts. Designers are important by shaping the initial forms, functions, and meanings of objects. Users, by their different ways of interpreting, using and talking about technologies, further contribute to their social shaping. They define whether they experience things as gendered and whether they find them useful in articulating and performing their (gender) identities. By interpreting and using technologies, users are thus active participants in shaping the gendering of artifacts.

Science as Father? Sex and Gender in the Age of Reproductive Technologies

The new reproductive technologies affect several of our conceptual distinctions, and most basically the one between nature and culture. This includes the understanding of reproduction as natural, biological processes and of the body as a product of nature. Nature and culture has been a basic conceptual distinction in western culture and it is paralleled in the division between sex, understood as nature, and gender, understood as culture. The process of reproduction is central to the understanding of sexual difference, in the sense that the abilities to conceive and give birth to children are generally considered to be features that distinguish woman from man. Therefore changes in this process provide us with empirical material for exploring changes in peoples understanding of sex and gender. The article explores reproductive technology as a provider of new cultural models for understanding the relationship between nature and culture and thereby the distinction of sex/nature and gender/culture.

Two Generations: Life stories and social change in Malaysia

Plurality and difference between women has been stressed in feminist research. There has, however, not been as much attention to differences related to age. Womens lives change during their lifetimes, but change also takes place from one generation to the next, especially during rapid modernisation processes. New lifestyles may affect relationships between women of different generations. Thus social change allocating higher status and more freedom of action to one age group may affect the distribution of privileges and status among women. The article analyses social change in relation to the rapid industrialisation process taking place in Southeast Asia, in this case in Malaysia. A life story approach is used to study how ongoing change affects the lives of women and the relationships between women .

Reproductive Images: The Autonomous Cell

New medical imaging technologies enable the production of photos of human cells that are magnified to make them visible to the eye. Such cellular images have gained aesthetic as well as dramatic appeal, as they have moved out of the laboratories and become available for the public. At this stage, they are refashioned to reveal matters more clearly and pedagogically. Organic matter that might be confusing to the audience is removed and colours added to distinguish various aspects—but despite such manipulations, the result appears as images of real human cells, making them different from drawings and models. One example of this is the website of a Norwegian governmental organization for information on biotechnology and bioethics which displays images of egg and sperm cells related to techniques of assisted reproduction. These images represent cells as autonomous and independent of human gendered bodies. The process whereby cells culturally become detached and disassociated from human bodies is here referred to as a process of entification whereby the cells reappear as detachable, usable entities.

Globalisation, place and gender

Current processes linking different parts of the world together economically and culturally are referred to asglobalisation. Though this term has gained immense popularity within a short time, critics have argued that it is hard to find empirical evidence that the world is becoming ‘one’. A crucial question is thenhow to look for such evidence. In many studies of globalisation, the general view taken is that of ‘global’, meaning that one searches for a global overview, or outlook, which is situated at no specific place. The present paper argues for a shift of focus, reasoning that to understand what is global we have to start with the local. The experiences of the global take place in particular local places, and to study such processes of change we need to situate our study in such a way that we can study the relationships between the local and the global. The particular place where our study takes place is rural Malaysia. Changes related to industrialisation are often spoken of in rather deterministic terms, in the sense that the local population are ‘victims’ of a global shift, whereas we argue for an alternative approach, analysing women workers as agents of change within their local community. Globalisation also mainly refers to external forces imposed on local actors, whereas we find the local to be imperative for the strategies of industrialists, as well as for the present processes of change.

Reproductive Imaginations: Stories of Egg and Sperm

The authors analyse how human reproduction is narrated in contemporary Norway, both in public settings and by individual women and men. We ask who and what is ascribed agency in these reproductive narratives and explore the different ways in which egg and sperm cells emerge as entities occupying centre stage in contemporary stories of conception—whereas the actual gendered persons are seldom mentioned. Stories of reproduction are “the bottom line”, so to speak, of perceptions of gender and gender difference. We discuss how gender is intricately and inadvertently implied in stories where egg and sperm cells take centre stage; on the one hand the gametes imply the meaning of women and men, but, on the other, this displacement liberates cultural meaning-making processes. In this text, we explore how gender is portrayed in contemporary versions of reproduction when it is generally depicted as a fusion of egg and sperm cells.

Brainwashing: Taking Another Turn with Biology

© Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the article.

The role of women in the new international division of labour – the case of Malaysian women in Norwegian industry

Female labour is important for the changes in the world economy, often referred to as the new international division of labour (NIDL). This fact is illustrated in a study of Norwegian industry in Malaysia. Previous research on the topic has emphasized the search for cheap female labour, while an awareness of the complexity of the motives behind the relocation of industry has not been expressed. Our article therefore is a contribution to revealing the complexity of this process as well as womens role within it.