| Description |
This paper deals with the use of communication technology by women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and how it relates to concepts of private and public space, i.e., gendered spatial segregation. Using available scholarship and data on female Internet usage in the MENA region as well as several blogs written by MENA women, women's different uses of blogs, chat rooms, and Facebook are analyzed to determine how the Internet functions as a venue for female public discourse. Internet communication technology has allowed women to enter an open, discursive domain without leaving the physical privacy of their homes or facing the same mechanisms of censorship that control their discourse in the traditional public space. The Internet has thus become an alternate "public space" that is distinct from traditional public space in several important ways. The private nature of content shared by women online, the decreased ability of entrenched patriarchal and governmental systems to regulate such content, and the cross-gender discursive interaction that takes place online makes the Internet a unique space for public discourse and presents unique challenges to Islamic social constructions of private and public space. The effectiveness of this alternate space as a venue for free female self-expression depends on the degree to which a woman's online and offline identities overlap. When these two identities are not kept separate, a woman's online discourse becomes constrained by the same forces that control it in traditional public space, suggesting that women's freedom of self-expression in the public sphere remains quite limited. However, the discursive interaction between men and women online helps construct a common discourse that degenderizes women's issues and could promote greater expressive mobility for women. Many questions are unanswered about how women use this space and what the ramifications are for their voices and rights in the future. This thesis explores what is known about the use of this alternate "public space." |
