The internet’s origins in science and military applications meant that for many years it was a male-dominated space, consistent with the traditional alignment of masculinity and technology. The internet has now penetrated every aspect of modern life, from learning and locating information to communication, shopping and recreation. For those with internet access, increasing experience in the online environment leads to a growing use of the internet for the serious business of life, such as work-related tasks, financia l transa tions, serious communication and seeking important information (Horrigan and Rainie 2002:2). The wide range of functions for which the internet can now be used has meant that where there are high levels of internet usage, the proportion of women online is closer to the proportion of men online. In 2003, 65 per cent of American men were using the internet, compared with 61 per cent of American women.
There are a number of cognitive factors that influence internet usage: familiarity with technology, self-efficacy and attitudes that predict behaviour (Jackson et al. 2001:367–8). With the increasing use of the internet at work and at home, men and women are becoming equally familiar with the technology. Where self-efficacy is a belief that one’s actions will lead to desirable outcomes, males may feel more self-efficacious with regard to computer technology than females. Research on gendered attitudes to computers suggests that women have less favourable attitudes to computers than men (Mitra et al. 2001). These cognitive factors may be why men and women seem to use the internet in quite different ways. High proportions of female internet users go online to look for health or religious information, while a large percentage of male users are looking for news, or financial, sport or political information (Madden and Rainie 2003). Email is overwhelmingly the most popular use of the internet, and females tend to use email more than males, consistent with women’s stronger motivation for interpersonal communication (Morahan-Martin 1998).
Men with internet access tend to get their news from the internet. While women may log on to find out more about an event they have heard about elsewhere, men are more likely to log on to get the news in the first place, checking online sources to fin d o what is happening in the world. Regardless of gender, however, wealthier and more educated internet users are more likely to go online for news. Getting financia l informati and completing financial transactions online are also activities that seem to be highly correlated with being male, high-income and welleducated. Researching stocks, getting share prices, and buying and selling stocks and bonds online is primarily the province of well-todo, educated men. Men also seem to use the internet more for searching for information about products and services. Browsing for information on large ticket items such as computers, electrical goods and cars often takes place at work. However, when it comes to buying products, the gender gap disappears, with equal numbers of men and women reporting that they have purchased items over the internet. Men, though, are more likely to participate in online auctions. When it comes to using the internet for leisure pursuits—looking for information about books and films, hobby interests and leisure activities; playing games; taking part in chat rooms; and listening to or downloading music—slightly more men are doing so than women. The biggest demographic difference here, however, is age rather than gender, with young people using the internet for leisure pursuits far more than older generations (The PEW Project 2000). Not surprisingly, males make up the majority of visitors to sports sites, where they constitute over 60 per cent of visitors, and to ‘adult’ sites. A national Australian survey found that 16.5 per cent of men and 2.4 per cent of women had visited an internet sex site on purpose in the previous year (Richters et al 2003:185).
The simple statistics of gendered internet use disguise the complexity of the mutual shaping of gender and the internet, as the range of uses to which the internet is put impacts upon both how gender is experienced and how the internet develops to accommodate nascent uses. An analysis of the everyday uses of the internet shows that technology is as multidimensional as gender, and both are experienced ‘in complex and contradictory ways’ (Van Zoonan 2002:6).
The internet does seem to invite people to experiment in ways that they otherwise might not. The internet’s accessibility, affordability and anonymity facilitate activities that may be more problematic off-line. First there is an appearance of personal security—users log on from the comfortable space of their home or office. Then there is a perception of privacy—once you have created a screen name and online persona, it is easy to believe that the real you is effectively disguised. And there is an appearance that the online environment is ephemeral, as sites are exited, messages deleted and texts disappear from the screen. While these perceptions might not be accurate, they do make possible experiences that are restricted off-line by the obvious absence of anonymity, security and erasure. For example, it seems as though online gay chat rooms primarily attract younger men, men who do not identify as gay, and men who live outside the major cities (Tikkanen and Ross 2000:614).
Research into internet sex finds that women are more likely to spend time flirting or having ‘cybersex’ with others in sexually oriented chat rooms, while men are drawn to porn web sites (Cooper et al. 2000). However, in interactive online sex forums, men are encouraged to participate in erotic displays and performances. In providing ‘a space where men can explore the erotic pleasures of sexualised display’, these forums ‘augment the development of male sexual identities that incorporate passivity and vulnerability’ (Kibby and Costello 1999:364). While the internet offers a range of sex- and sexuality-related information and opportunities that can significantly enhance human welfare and quality of life, it also offers problematic pornographic materials, allows sexual offenders to recruit victims, provides a convenient environment for cyberstalkers and sexual harassers, and enables infidelity and adultery (Barak and King 2000:518
Most cyberstalking perpetrators are male, and the majority of victims are female. While stalking also is an off-line phenomenon, the online environment facilitates the gathering of information on the target and enables a range of ways to communicate with them. The internet also makes possible third-party stalking, where others are induced to stalk or harass the victim through communications which purport to come from the victim (Adam 2002:136), or present the victim in such a way as to invite contact (Kibby 1997).
Online relationships can, however, be an effective ‘practice ground for learning and exploring sexuality and relationships’ (Levine 2000:572). Online, relationships flourish insulated from the irritating minutiae of everyday life, as cyberspace provides a playground where all people can feel sexually desired, and no particular type of relationship is valued above others. For many, the skills developed online are applied to face-to-face relationships; however, for some the attraction to virtual relationships may become uncontrollable. Whether cybersexual addiction (compulsive use of online pornography) and cyber-relationship addiction (pathological involvement in online relationships) are internet addictions or uses of the internet to satisfy sex-related addictions is open to debate; however, it is agreed that the internet ‘may provide an alternative reality to the user and allow them feelings of immersion and anonymity which may lead to an altered state of consciousness’ (Griffiths 2000:539). This alternative reality might be as addictive as drugs, with similar effects.
As the internet becomes as much a consumer route as an information highway, gender differences in attitudes towards ecommerce become more apparent. Researchers see an ‘easy fit between men’s buying concerns and the Internet environment’ (Dittmar et al. 2004:443) as ‘functional motives become even more important on-line than in conventional buying, and psychological motivations, especially social experiential concerns, become less important’ (Dittmar et al. 2004:440). Men are unlikely to be deterred from online shopping by the lack of social contact, and it could be that men expect that the internet will allow them to avoid those aspects of conventional shopping that they see as negative. In addition, the increased functionality of online purchasing is likely to attract men.
Those looking at the internet as it developed saw the new technology as profoundly liberating, opening up outlets for the people at the margins of society to tell their own stories. Because posting information on the Web is so individual, inexpensive and immediate, internet enthusiasts believed that it would virtually eliminate barriers to self-publishing. It was thought that the internet would democratise the flow of information, replacing top-down dependence on traditional news and media organisations with bottomup sharing among individuals. While there has not been a wholesale revolution, weblogs have broken key news stories with significant political and economic effects. For example, Beldar Blog was able to force the resignation of long-esteemed newsman Dan Rather of CBS, by revealing that the documents cited in a 60 Minutes story, which suggested lapses in President Bush’s military record, could not be authenticated. Weblogs are the fastest growing type of online publishing, eclipsing the personal homepage. There are three basic types of weblogs: ‘filters’, which are primarily links to links to world events and external comment; ‘journals’, which are the blogger’s thoughts or descriptions of their day-to-day life; and ‘knowledge-logs’, which are repositories of information and observations on a particular content area (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus and Wright 2004). Teenage girls seem to produce most journal-type blogs, but all other categories are dominated by adult males (Herring, Kouper, Scheidt and Wright 2004).
A good deal of the public debate surrounding the potential harmful effects of the internet concerns children’s access to pornography. Research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice is in its infancy, but there is widespread concern over the efficiency of filtering software and the long-term effect of the internet’s delivery of pornography on a scale and breadth previously unimaginable. File-sharing networks, in particular, can lead to a tremendous amount of intentional and inadvertent exposure of children and young people to pornography and other adult sexual media. This exposure must have a considerable impact on the development of sexuality, sexual attitudes, moral values and gendered practices.
Cyberspace might not have turned out to be the democratic whole-earth community envisioned by Rheingold (1993), but the internet is enabling people to overcome the previous communication boundaries of time, place and cost as well as inhibition, custom and proscription, to connect with new individuals and groups, experiences and information. The experience of cyberspace is gendered, and its gender relations are an extension of those in the off-line world. However, the internet does appear to facilitate the softening of gender boundaries in some areas, and the increasing range of gendered activities online is shaping the way in which cyberspace develops.
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