Gender
Search history: Examining pornography on the Internet
Gender IT, Namita Malhotra
The author examines the phenomenon of pornography especially with respect to its burgeoning expansion on the Internet. She traces the development of pornography through the ages, and the fact that each new communication medium has provided newer challenges in the censorship and control of such information. Sexually explicit depiction of women has often had links with the rise of crimes against the gender, and the Internet has exacerbated the problem to a whole new dimension.
The power of TV: Cable television and women's status in India
2007, Robert Jensen and Emily Oster, Watson Institute for International Studies - Brown University, University of Chicago & NBER
Cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world. The availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world, which may affect individual attitudes and behaviours. This paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural India. Using a three-year individual-level panel dataset, the study finds that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in women's status.
Gendering processes within technological environments: A cyberfeminist issue
2002, Radhika Gajjala and Annapurna Mamidipuni, Rhizomes
This article explores everyday practices in communities of production and focuses on the processes of gendering that influence, and in turn are influenced, by interactions with technologies of cultural and material production. The historically prevalent patterns of imbalances of power simultaneously get repeated and challenged in the new context. Technologies produced in the socio-cultural context of developed Western countries do not automatically empower the recipients of these technologies and very often, there is a reinforcement of existing hegemonies. The background of the two authors makes this dialogue between them an interesting examination of the need to re-design new technological environments to effectively re-map power structures in established communities of production.
From women's media to rural media
June 19, 2005, India Together
Newsletters in rural Uttar Pradesh, started by women as a development effort to help communicate among themselves and share opinions, have evolved into forms of social mobilisation. These newsletters, now taking the form of newspapers, address social issues which affect entire communities and are in turn mobilising these communities in the process.
