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Digital technology plays an important role in women's everyday lives. Various factors determine adoption, use, and enjoyment of digital technology by women. Our 2016 Library Quarterly article introduced a qualitative look at women's adoption and use of digital technologies. The current article is a continuation of the previous study, wherein we interview women in Chile and Australia to examine factors of women's acceptance of digital technologies for everyday life use identified with the India data. We reflect on the role digital technology plays in women's everyday lives in these three countries and what cultural factors determine adoption, use, and enjoyment of digital technology, including digital literacy factors, everyday life factors, professional use factors, time factors, social networking factors, and privacy and security factors. We add two factors to our existing model of digital inclusion: physical access factors and device dependency factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Network Games (SNGs) are played via social networking sites such as Facebook. In this article, I examine some of the negative interactions that happen within SNGs that may be obscured by the assumption—driven by benevolent sexism—that these games are entirely collaborative. Drawing on posts made to an online forum devoted to YoWorld—a long-running Facebook game—I detail player frustrations with bullying and other forms of interpersonal conflict. I argue that if casual games are only ever seen as docile spaces of collaborative play, it reaffirms the gendered and stereotypical assumptions underpinning who plays SNGs and for what reasons. Furthermore, I argue that assumptions about collaborative and welcoming environments may also be setting novice players up for disappointment when they inevitably encounter anti-social behaviors within a SNG gaming community. If SNGs are framed as an easier entry point for girls and women into broader gaming cultures, it is imperative that alongside encouraging their play, we also equip them with the necessary tools to respond to the negative interactions that they might experience, thereby reducing the likelihood of their eventual disengagement from gaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on attitudes toward women in electronic commerce advertising in magazines. The authors theorize that, since women traditionally have had low participation in technology fields, that this attitude has been manifested through negative depictions of women in advertisements for technology. The authors determined whether e-commerce advertisements continue to portray negative stereotypical gender differences relating to technology. Women who view such advertisements could disapprove of them and perceive the brands negatively. A analysis of content of e-commerce advertising for companies, such as Microsoft Corp. or Xerox Corp., in magazines was performed. Compared to past attitudes, advertisements for e-commerce products and services portray women in a more equitable manner.

Diverse agricultural technologies are promoted to increase yields and incomes, save time, improve food and nutritional security, and even empower women. Yet a gender gap in technology adoption remains for many agricultural technologies, even for those that are promoted for women. This paper complements the literature on gender and technology adoption, which largely focuses on reasons for low rates of female technology adoption, by shifting attention to what happens within a household after it adopts a technology. Understanding the expected benefits and costs of adoption, from the perspective of women users in households with adult males, can help explain observed technology adoption rates and why technology adoption is often not sustained in the longer term. Drawing on qualitative data from Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania, this paper develops a framework for examining the intrahousehold distribution of benefits from technology adoption, focusing on small-scale irrigation technologies. The framework contributes to the conceptual and empirical exploration of joint control over technology by men and women in the same household. Efforts to promote technology adoption for agricultural development and women’s empowerment would benefit from an understanding of intrahousehold control over technology to avoid interpreting technology adoption as an end in and of itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines 96 US and British Commonwealth articles on the 2014 Wisconsin Slender Man stabbing. Using critical textual analysis, this study examined how media took a horror-themed meme from the underbelly of the Internet and curated a moral panic, once the meme was thrust into the international limelight. Because memes are a particular intersection of images and technology, media made sense of this meme-inspired attack in three ways: (1) through an idolatrous tone that played on long-standing Western anxieties over images; (2) by hyper-sensationalizing women's so-called frivolous uses of technology; and (3) by removing blame from the assailants and, in turn, finding the Internet and the Slender Man meme guilty in the court of public opinion. Through this tripartite rhetoric, this study suggests that when media set out to curate a moral panic surrounding images and technology, together, the discourse that emerges is one that feminizes the Internet, turning it into technology-as-mother and image-as-child. This study also suggests this is the case because when women receive macro-level structure equality, micro-level inequities and attempts of control against them increase. Digital and image rhetoric are not exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whose Artifacts? Whose Stories? explores uses of public history to tell stories of women's relationship with science and technology at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, one of Canada's national museum. The article examines how stories of women, which have been long overlooked by curators who in the past considered technological artifacts through the lenses of type collecting and history of science and technologies methodologies, are now being framed in the context of public history and hence are coming to the forefront of museum collecting and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a conference titled "Body Politics: Representing Masculinity in Media and Performing Arts," held in University of Turin, Italy on June 6-7, 2017. Topics discussed include role of festivals and other organizations in promoting women's cinema; accessibility to porn consumption using internet; and need for building up a better relationship between women and technology.

In highly technical societies, gender is largely produced in relation to technology. In this article, we explore the effects on the construction of gender and technology when groups of parents discuss technological activities. To do so, we report the results of a research project conducted in Barcelona, in which fathers and mothers, after playing video games with their sons and daughters, expressed their opinions about that activity, the relations their sons and daughters have with video games, and their own relationship with technology. The results support the idea that gender and technology are discursively and practically in permanent co-construction and have a relatively firm relationship that guarantees stability to both. However, we find that when people are confronted with facts that contradict the dominant perception that women are technologically unskilled or uninterested, it is only technology and not gender that is flexibly interpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-reads ELIZA, the famous computer program of early artificial intelligence created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966 to test the possibility of intelligent interaction between humans and machines through language. Given newly emerging intelligent gadgets such as smart-home assistants that operate through natural language, I argue firstly for the timeliness of this program and explore the ways in which ELIZA stimulated debates concerning whether it could be considered an interlocutor for humans or a failure in exactly this regard. Secondly, I develop a feminist technoecological account of interaction at the ELIZA/user interface. In so doing, I seek to challenge the dualisms between body/mind, rationality/affectivity, and subject/object, thereby avoiding a reductionist perspective that calls into question the human subject as an autonomous agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effectively engaging with technologies of nonviolence for girls and young women requires attention to systemic, symbolic, and everyday forms of violence online and offline, as well as to how power is broadly manifest. We draw from three different interdisciplinary perspectives and critical reflections to consider networked technologies and online communities in relation to nonviolence. We explore mentorship and subversive education through Neal Stephenson's 1995 novel, The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, identity politics on Facebook in a reflective study of digital citizenship for queer girl visibility, and online grassroots community solutions in considering the social potential of online forums and solutions for online harassment. Our varied perspectives encounter contradictions, such as the need for access to and protection from diverse online communities, as a necessary consideration for developing policy and creating networked and community-based technologies of nonviolence. We conclude with five recommendations in a call to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid developments in digital technologies have sparked revolutionary shifts in participatory research. Emerging tools such as digital stories and cellphilms offer participants opportunities to engage actively in research and to produce media about their everyday lives. Yet, while these may enable such engagement, researchers need to ensure that the very tools meant as technologies of nonviolence are not in and of themselves violent. This article uses a technology-based, participatory visual methods workshop conducted with girls and young women as part of addressing sexual violence in a rural community in South Africa as a case study. We identify and reflect on some of the ethical issues that arose during the workshop and how we addressed them. Our aim is always to locate our work on addressing sexual violence with young rural women within an ethics of nonviolence rooted in and responsive to the context in which we work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies such as electrical appliances entered American households on a large scale only after many decades of promotion to the public. The genre of ‘household physics’ textbooks was one such form of promotion that was directed towards assumed white, female and largely middle-class home economics students. Published from the 1910s to the 1950s in the United States, the textbooks instructed future housewives and home economics professionals in the use of technology through an introductory physics education, and at the same time modelled an appropriately circumscribed relationship between female students and new technologies. Household physics textbooks also acted as moral tools, encouraging a certain aesthetic of progress in which model housewives confidently purchased and operated new household devices. By learning physics, the students learned to acquire and use appliances in a safer and more ‘scientific’ way, thus ameliorating fear of the technology, while not overstepping roles bounded by class and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The pessimistic scenario for ‘women in information communications technology’ and for ‘women in technology’ generally is even more paradoxical and insidious with respect to ‘women in computing’. Studies within this field not only report insignificant improvement in the proportion of women in Western countries’ computing fields but also alert us of a declining trend. Moreover, that decline has been accompanied – or even preceded – by years of research and programs that have specifically focused on increasing women’s participation in computing; however, they have not had the expected effect. More surprisingly, there has been a significant increase in the representation of women in all other science-related fields and professions. Our aim is to provide some clues to fight the feeling of inexorability that may be entailed by the research on women in computing. We will argue that part of the problem is related to the static nature of the research deployed around the problem of ‘women in computing’, primarily, the research constructed around the ‘leaky pipeline’ metaphor. We provide a synthesis of the critiques this research has received in recent decades and highlight research trends that render other landscapes visible when studying ‘women in computing’. These trends help us question how we are conducting research within this field and urge us to problematise assumptions about computing and gender that we may paradoxically continue to reproduce even while denouncing the paucity of women in computing and studying the reasons for this state of affairs. In short, we present the need for different researchers’ eyes that allow different landscapes of women and computing to be seen and produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses rising participation of research universities in free massive open online courses (MOOCs). Topics discussed include a collective curriculum planned by FemTechNet, a feminist online educational resource on women and technology; contribution of rising computational media, distributed networks and mobile technologies for changing nature of feminist collaboration and development of innovative use of digital technologies which serve important cultural and social needs.

A current empirical study explores how Austrian women aged 60 to 70 use and ascribe meaning to ICTs such as television, radio, mobile phone, computer or the Internet. In the study, life-graphs, semi-structured interviews, and indoor walking interviews are used to examine the everyday usage and interpretation of ICTs by older women, coming from various social backgrounds and living in the Austrian region of Styria. Analysing empirical material of the study, this paper focuses on the interrelation of generation-specific media practices and individual (media) biographies as they both influence older women's usage of and attitude towards ICTs. By using Maierhofer's concept of "anocriticism" as a frame for the analysis of the material in addition to Mannheim's idea of "generation location", it becomes possible to elaborate on a more nuanced understanding of the relation between collective experiences within time and individual life-course perspectives in the context of ICTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an Action Research program whose aim was to promote the skilful use of technology in young women to reduce the male dominance found in this sector. From Arising out of the elaboration of life stories of women studying computer science, we designed and performed a social theatre play in high schools that recreated the experiences of girls with technology. The conflicting situations were transformed in order to overcome the problems presented and to empower participating girls. We show how to test new forms of acting using Social Theatre in front of oppressing situations; we criticise the current associations between gender and technology; and, we formulate recommendations to encourage women to opt for ta technological career path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores certain possible reasons behind the uneasy relationship between women and technology. The cultural identification of technology with masculinity has been well documented through previous research. However, we feel it is useful to revisit this complex relationship through the scope of a more subtle distinction between ‘users’ and ‘connoisseurs’, and the struggle over power, which revolves around a specific form of hegemonic masculinity. We draw on interviews that examine students’ experiences, emotions, and statements about gender, technology, mathematics, and education, and we try to offer an understanding of the ways women negotiate their position within the dominant discourse about computing and mathematics. Our analysis employs post-structuralist discourse theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What factors might be causing the low participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields? What can be done to attract more girls and women into STEM in Asia and beyond? A regional study published by UNESCO Bangkok in early 2015 explores a wide range of issues from gender differences in learning achievement in mathematics and science, participation in higher education as well as educational, psychosocial and labour market factors, all of which can influence girls' and women's attitudes towards STEM fields as a choice for further study and as a career. The report focuses on findings based on a regional desk study with research conducted in seven countries under review: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Republic of Korea and Vietnam. It is the second of two research studies as part of a three-year research project conducted by the UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education (UNESCO Bangkok) in collaboration with the Korean Women's Development Institute (KWDI), which aims to explore issues of gender, learning achievement and transition to the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotechnology has much potential to meet the challenges of the global society in diverse sectors. Hence, it can certainly contribute to improving the health conditions of women and contribute to their well-being. But this is not happening as expected on account of various factors. Although women have made much progress in getting access to science and technology education, they are still underrepresented in science and technology. Hence, there is an urgent need to enhance women's participation in science and technology, particularly biotechnology. Women's needs should be given importance in biotechnology research and development. For society to derive significant benefits from science and technology, particularly biotechnology, women's needs for technology should be taken into account and women's participation in science and technology should be enhanced. This should not be limited to laboratories but also to enterprises, whether they are small, medium or large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian biotechnology has undergone rapid development within the past two decades. China, like many other countries in Asia, has made huge strides in biosciences and invested in the core elements to help transform it into a leading biotechnology hub in the region: state-of-the-art infrastructure, advanced technologies, pioneering research programmes, as well as rigorous science education and training. The rapid growth of the industry has translated in increased career opportunities for budding scientists. However, global statistics indicates that like most of the world, gender inequality in the biosciences persist in China due to traditional mindsets of women's role in society. However, in recognition of the valuable contributions women have made and are making in bioscience development, initiatives aimed at closing the gender gap are being implemented from the level of government to policies in universities. Thus, there are considerable opportunities and avenues for young women in China with the passion and persistence to pursue a career in biosciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "gender digital divide" constitutes a prolific research program that compares the differences between women and men in access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Nevertheless, those using feminist socio-constructivist perspectives argue for the need to pay attention, not only to "access," but also to "design," in addition to considering social relations as something that is coded within technological artifacts. From this perspective, gender constitutes an integral part of technological production. This paper explores the co-constitution of gender and technology, considering a specific action- research experience. It is argued that the re-signification of gendered and technological codes drifts through: a) the opening of gendered and technological codes; b) the production of new cultural imaginaries that question hegemonic representations of gender; and c) the production of new subjectivities through the reorganization of socio-technical practices to develop performative acts that transform patriarchal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational, economic, and technological challenges are faced by women throughout the world. These challenges must be addressed. Are opportunities presented through the use of mobile and social technologies an answer to this gender specific issue? Slovenia, Romania, and Georgia are among several countries being studied globally in an effort to determine the status of the use of social technologies by women with the goal of women's empowerment. Social Technologies investigated included facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+. Survey results come from respondents from remote regions to large cities. Those using social technologies listed facebook more than any of the other media and included numerous positive benefits: ability to access desired information; fast and effective communication; increased awareness; more informed; and an increased number of opportunities. Complete results of the study including qualitative data which strongly supports the benefits of the use of social technologies for women's empowerment are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses ways of addressing the gender-based digital divide in developing countries. It examines factors that contribute to the disparity in males' and females' access to and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in such countries. It also discusses the importance of collaboration among different sectors in the promotion of digital education and skills among girls beginning at a young age.

The adoption of Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies to optimize beef cattle production in Northern Australia promises to boost the sector's productivity and profitability. This study examines the roles of grazier women in particular in the current use of and further adoption of on farm technology. It adds to the broader literature on women in agriculture, briefly examining feminist theory and then discussing eco feminism, capital resource ownership, and rural residency. The study considered the adoption of specific rural technologies (such as remote cameras, remote weather stations, bore cameras, and other livestock management systems), but found the current use of these tools to be limited. The limited spread of new rural technologies strongly supports the aim of this study, and ultimately, raises the question of who is driving rural technology diffusion and adoption amongst cattle producers. Data collected through 60 conversational interviews and from 141 participants of an online survey established the centrality of women graziers' roles. The research found that women use most components of online technology three times more often than men. While they were sometimes reluctant to take on the digital homestead tasks, by doing so they feel empowered and valued in their work. More importantly, the study found that as technology diffuses into rural settings and is adopted by grazier women, it is modifying gender divisions, specifically away from traditional separate roles and towards productive partnerships in farming families. Those advocating the further adoption of the new PLF technologies need to be mindful of the women graziers' role as busy users and joint decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper explores a new rhetoric that might help to increase our understanding of women's relationships with information and communication technology. We have often heard the claim that women have to give up part of their femininity in technological contexts. However, it is not always femininity women have to "give up", the author argues, but rather their close bond with technology - a "something else" that has no precise name, and which for that reason can slip away in an almost invisible way. This paper claims that we need to make this "something else" become visible, suggesting the concept of "technicity" as a place to start the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and scholars consider the Internet today to be the most far-reaching technological tool, in regards to its implications for our present-day society. Its development and usage has, among other things, implications for gender perceptions, as well as for education and studies. The main purpose of the study was to examine attitudes held by female education students toward information technology in general and studying within an Internet-environment in particular, as well as the way they perceive themselves in such a changing world. 20 interviews with students of education were analyzed during the course of this study. Results of the study indicate that the interviewed students perceive this world (Internet and technology) as a part of their lives. They see the Internet as an efficient and necessary tool. It seems, however, that the women do not view the Internet as an object over which they have control or have control over its development. In addition, a positive approach toward learning through the Internet was found and the students noted the importance of information technology's contribution to learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a participatory media project and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in the Danish social housing area Blågården in Copenhagen, this article explores how technologically mediated places in the city are created through the uses of portable devices and everyday practices of web-based social media by a group of young Muslim women in the area. These second-generation female immigrants partake in self-presentation and interpersonal audiencing through mobile technologies on an unprecedented scale, impacting in the process on the understandings and appropriations of the city, where physical places and virtual space become profoundly entangled. It is argued in the article that distinct public spaces of appearance are enacted by these young women’s technology- and media-related activities. New spaces of potentiality emerge as a form of ‘moral laboratories’, where religion-, gender- and age-related (in)visibility, locality and morality are negotiated in novel ways. Traditional ethnographic fieldwork is combined with participatory and visual methods, interaction with media and technological tools both forming part of the object of study and being integral to the applied methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Past research in gender differences in the overall Internet use has been contradictory. Some asserted men used it more than women, while others asserted there were no gender difference. Both camps concluded that men and women differed in their motivation and utilization of time spent online. The purpose of the present research was to take a contemporary look at these gender differences. Using an online survey, we asked participants about their experiences with multiple forms of mediated communication: social networking sites, e-mail, video calls, instant messaging, texting, and phone calls. Our results indicated that women, compared to men, are generally more frequent mediated communication users. Compared to men, women prefer and more frequently use text messaging, social media, and online video calls. These results suggest that the nature of mediated social interaction is changing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that at least some portion of the digital ‘gender gap’ is a rhetorical construction that measures digital literacy by possession of legacy knowledge–knowledge co-constructed within the technology field where women are largely absent. This paper describes some culturally situated discourses and practices that shape the development of online spaces in subtly gendered ways. It describes Pinterest, a popular social bookmarking site overwhelmingly populated by women, and its design features that largely do not rely on legacy knowledge for engaged member participation. This paper finds that, first, the culturally situated practices of technologists introduce hegemonic narratives through design features that marginalize some female users. Second, some descriptions of the gender gap are rhetorically constructed, relying on evidence of legacy knowledge rather than examining the outcomes of women's online practices. Third, narrowing the gender gap will require a re-seeing and re-thinking about how ‘digital literacy’ is defined and measured. This paper offers insights into some of the barriers between women and digital fluency that are inadvertently constructed by the tacit knowledge of those who develop technologies – knowledge that is often inaccessible to women. Digital literacy theorists, instructors, and technology professionals may engage this research to either alter their end products so that the operation of those products does not assume tacit, legacy knowledge, or, alternatively, they may find ways to make this tacit knowledge more visible so that end users may actively engage the hegemonic narratives encoded in the products rather than passively consume them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the lack of female participation in the most-viewed videos on YouTube. A study revealed that women are underrepresented in the most-viewed videos in terms of the content and who was generating and posting them. Thus, the author advised women to embrace and use technology to provide them voice and offer a dialogue in multimedia and social media platforms. The major themes in the most-viewed videos include escapism, misogynistic discourse, violence and obscenity. The article concludes by suggesting to continue to examine the reasons for woman marginalization in all realms of technology.

The evolution of digital Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has changed the society world-wide. The Internet Technology has evolved as a result of ICT that dwells on virtual space across the world for E-Banking, where there is no geographical boundaries between different countries, known as Cyberspace which is a databank of knowledge and information. The databank is helpful for us in different aspects of life ranging from education & training, banking, marketing, advertising, commerce and business to general administration. The women and learners are using Internet for acquiring knowledge from it to use E-Banking systems the society is availing a full advantage of E-Banking through internet to express their independent views through social networking services. The analysis reveals that literate poor women require such programs which can give them exposure for improving their skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines 3 papers presented before the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine by 19th-century physician Julia W. Carpenter. The article identifies 3 strategies Carpenter used to negotiate the incompatible rhetorical expectations for women and for physicians. The published records of academy discussions provide evidence for Carpenter's colleagues' reactions to each strategy, revealing the complexity of her rhetorical situation and demonstrating the complex links among rhetorical practice, professional identity, and a communicator's social position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how users employ extraorganizational technical communication to reshape technologies, both materially and symbolically, even after these technologies enter into common use. Specifically, I analyze how women bicyclists of the 1890s authored instructional materials to complicate gendered and classed assumptions about users implicit in manufacturer-produced texts. I argue that technical communicators, in their teaching and research, should consider the role that extraorganizational technical communication plays in generating vital and lasting cultural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses American writer Djuna Barnes' journalism on the ways her newspaper writing negotiated the politics of performance and leisure spaces of Manhattan and Coney Island in New York City in the 1910s. It focuses on Barnes' journalism in the early 20th century which explores the intersection between women, technology and technological innovations. The article offers insights into a study of gender, modernism and technological media.

This article discusses a study which examined the existence of gender differences in the computer literacy levels of clinical medical students at various southern Nigerian universities. Topics include the importance of information and communication technology (ICT) skills in the medical profession, the impact of traditional gender roles in certain cultures on women's usage of ICTs, and the role of computer access in determining the levels of software and computer literacy for both male and female students. The methodology used for the study was a descriptive survey.