Gender at the Crossroads: The Internet as Cultural Text

Abstract

This article examines the Internet as a cultural text and studies the relationship between gender and the Internet at the intersection of science, political economy, and culture. The author suggests that to come to a fuller understanding of the relation between gender and the Internet, a feminist cultural studies perspective will provide a useful theoretical and methodological framework, as it allows one to analyze the material conditions as a determinant in women's relationship to the Internet while recognizing women's power to actively engage in the construction of the meaning of these relationships. A feminist cultural studies perspective thus enables us to examine the Internet as a cultural text, oscillating between modernist and postmodernist paradigms.