Women's Work on the World Wide Web: How a New Medium Represents an Old Problem

Abstract

This article examines how iVillage.com, one of the most popular World Wide Web portals for women, advises them on how to integrate the demands of wage and domestic labor. Specifically, the article focuses on the implications such advice has for gender relations within the family and for feminist politics in U.S. society. Discursive strategies in advice generated by iVillage.com support the ideology of postfeminism, which promotes individual consumer-based solutions for a primarily middle-class audience over politics addressing the gendered division of labor, both within individual families and in social structures. Such commercial Web-site discourses are consistent with those constructed by other mainstream media.

Parenting and Digital Media: From the Early Web to Contemporary Digital Society

“…Parenting websites and discussion forums have attracted attention from scholars working in gender studies. Some researchers argue that the forums reinforce traditional parenting stereotypes and unequal gender roles (Ammari and Schoenebeck ; Brady and Guerin ; Madge and O'Connor ; Rashley ) and tend to promote individual consumer‐based solutions rather than addressing issues relating to the gendered division of parenting (Gambles ; Jensen ; Worthington ). However, other researchers have identified a growing feminist voice on some parenting website forums (Pedersen and Smithson ).…”

“…Some researchers have claimed that the forums are mainly used by white, middle-class, heterosexual women (Madge and O'Connor 2006;Worthington 2005). However, others have shown that the use of parenting sites is more diverse, with lone parents and those with lower levels of education and income also finding support (Dunham et al 1998;Sarkadi and Bremberg 2005).…”

From Produsers to Shareaholics: Changing Models of Reader Interaction in Women’s Online Magazines

“…Although the female user remained as the marked gendered category online, this now became "commodified as a desirable demographic for con-sumption" (Consalvo 2002, 133), a yet unexploited goldmine for marketers that was particularly appealing in light of increasing numbers of women going online and their independent spending power achieved in recent decades (Sadowska 2002). By stressing communicative and community-building aspects, the market began to fervently position the Internet as offering women novel opportunities to express their femininity (Gustafson 2002;Royal 2005;Worthington 2005). Most typically, however, the dot.com industries promoted segregated commercial e-spaces for women, then sometimes called "'she sites" (e.g.…”

Developing a corporeal cyberfeminism: beyond cyberutopia

“…And even those resources available for women in this narrow understanding are often questionable in worth to feminists. As Worthington (2005) notes, 'the flexible nature of the Internet seems to offer a progressive alternative to traditional mainstream media's consistent devaluation of female labor … [but] the commercial nature of many Web sites often prevents fulfillment of that promise' (p. 56). At the very least, cyberutopian positions do not address the negative impacts of technology for women's labor on a global scale (see Basi, 2009).…”