Cyber Feminism: Unleashing Women Power through Technology

Abstract

Feminism is an existential struggle to assert one's individuality-it stands for gender equality, independence and empowerment to women. The concept of feminism examines and analyzes gender identity, by way of targeting women's autonomous self-identity. If we enter into the world of cyberspace we find technology is opening up the possibility for female emancipation. Over just two decades, the Internet has worked a thorough revolution and is considered to be a great equalizer; yet, access to it is not uniformly shared. This paper explores what Internet along with the cyberspace signifies to women and how they employ the cyberspace for their personal schedule from a socio-anthropological perspective. Cyber feminism is basically involved with countering the recognized and accepted domination of men in the employment and advancement of information and communication technology (ICT) and cyberspace. The image of technology needs to change to incorporate a female view.

Untitled

“…Cyberspace allowed women to make network with other women and promote feminist standpoint (Dagona et al 2013;Schuster 2013). According to cyber-feminist the women's agency are freed from traditional constraints and are able to experiment with identity and gain new awareness for claiming power, freedom and authority (Mohanty and Samantaray 2017). It is also found in other research that in European countries almost all women politicians are using social media during their political campaign.…”

Cyberfeminism: A Relationship between Cyberspace, Technology, and the Internet

“…6. How women have become savvy users Mohanty and Samantaray (2017) says that the struggle for feminine identity is a phenomenon of social post-independence. The example of Kapilaben Vanka, an Executive Committee of Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) member who shares how a mobile device has changed her life, will help understand the phenomenon of social post-independence.…”

“…The cell phone has saved Vanka tremendous time and money. She earned about 1500 to 2000 Rupees as an added income since she started using a cell phone to communicate (Mohanty & Samantaray, 2017).…”

Las Periodistas Paramos in Spain: Professional, feminist Internet activism

“…Feminism saw the Internet as an opportunity for freedom, emancipation and equality (Colley and Maltby, 2008; Haraway, 1998; Plant, 1997), as a safe space (Clark-Parsons, 2018), its control and privacy (Swart et al, 2018) even though it was aware of structural limitations such as access, cost, literacy and sexism (Eudey, 2012). This is why some feminist theorists (De Miguel and Boix, 2002; Mohanty and Samantaray, 2017) conclude that cyberfeminism is one of the keys to a new social and economic order, one in which the role of women is constructively redefined. In it, technology breaks down the barriers of ‘time, space, race, language, region, physical appearance, economic status .…”