Challenging or Reinforcing the Gender Divide?

Abstract

This chapter aims to deepen the understanding of how the appropriations of new communication technologies in dramatic changing communication ecologies interrelate with social and cultural changes in contemporary rural and urban Kenya, focusing on gender and space. The study, which is set in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, is based on a 799 household's survey concerning gendered access and usage of media and ICT and 80 life-world interviews with men and women on their appropriations of new media. The chapter concludes that the interrelation between new media and gender is complex. To a large extent the media usage reflects the patriarchal structure in Kenya and reinforces gendered spaces but new media also offer new spaces that challenge prevailing norms. Suggesting that new technologies can simultaneously function as vehicles of transformation and reproduce power relations and cultural patterns.