Cyberfeminism, Gender Dynamics and Women Empowerment

Cyberspatial technologies bring forth radical negotiation of gender relations and challenge patriarchal hegemony. The extension of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) proffers great opportunities to women. ICT empower women, facilitate feminist activism and challenge male dominance. Cyberspace and feminism conjoin to construct a new feminist paradigm. The 1990s usher in the arrival of productive formations crucial for gender equality and women empowerment. Rosi Bradiotti, in her essay, “Cyberfeminism with a Difference” exhorts women to undertake the dance through cyberspace to create a novel discourse. The incredible confluence of women’s involvement in digital technologies across theoretical, critical and activist spheres has generated numerous cyberfeminist discourses. These discourses organize feminist, political and cultural environment on the internet. Despite the gender gap and digital divide, the new-media books penned by women provide models of politically engaged feminist praxis. The formidable feminist projects undertaken since 1997 erode, to use Jennifer Brayton’s words, the patriarchal and alienating structure of technology. While cyberwomanists in the United States and other parts of the world find cyberspace a primary solution, cyberfeminists in Germany did confront problems. The internet in the new millennium, paradoxically, acts as liberating and constraining for women. The paper delves into the emancipatory space created by technology and hindrances in the path of women’s empowerment projects. It also augments the politics of presence with digital reconfigurations of female identity.