Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 161
these technologies to the quality and degree of use in everyday life. Studies
have shown the segregation of almost all spheres of social life starting
from educational systems and reaching the very top echelons of transnational
business or state governments. In the ‘developed’ world alone, the
number of women training and working in IT industries has dropped,
that of enrolled female students in science degrees has decreased, the ratio
of women and men in mass communications education and industry
has hit a low threshold for the last three decades, and employment in
the communication sector and especially ICTs consists predominantly of
part-time, low-paid, temporary contracts without adequate labour conditions
(Adam 2000; Etzkowitz et al. 1994; Millar and Jagger 2001; NOP
World 2001; Rush et al. 2004).
Feminist advocates have also argued that, within policy debates, there
is a false division between developers (scientists/specialists) and the users,
as two separate groups. The process of production, direction, development
and redevelopment of technology is therefore seen as cut off from
the social relations defining the direction of this process. The dominant
policy discussions do not seem to ask the question to what degree the segregation
of ‘techies’ and users affect not only the degree of acceptance and
use of new technologies but also the rate and spectrum of distribution,
application, relation to users, impact on economies and politics. Limiting
the debate over the sociality of ICT technologies to the conditions
of usage and access to technology and information is fragmented. The
‘world’s inhabitants’ and citizens are treated almost as passive receivers
of technology. This line of reasoning suggests that the opening up of
technology to many more receivers is enough to guarantee commercial
success and high rates of adaptability. It is only under this limiting agenda
that gender appears in policy considerations.
According to the WSIS agenda and proposed themes, three areas are
important in the discussions of the Information Society: Vision which
refers to the shared visions, if any, of the international community; the
use of ICTs for development; and steps to the reduction of impediments
to cross-border e-commerce. A significant body of research has shown
that girls and women perform better in all-women environments than
mixed-sex classes. In science, where the number of female students is
falling steadily in Western nations, the symbolic separation of the ‘expert’
and the ‘user’ further exclude women from the development processes of
technology (see Clegg 2001). The marginal proportion of women in the
‘new media’ industries is evident throughout: women represent a small
minority of workers employed in the Australian IT sector with only 17 per
cent of the Computer Society members being female (Sinclair 2002).
Women remain marginalized users at clerical ‘pink-collar jobs’, low paid