Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > March > 14 > Entry
Panel: Everything I Needed to Know About the Web I Learned from Feminism
Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Saturday
Panelists: Heather Gold (founder, Subvert.com), danah boyd (researcher, Microsoft Research), Betty Flowers (director, LBJ Library), Julia Angwin (author)
The gist: The nature of Web 2.0 and social networking lends itself to tasks traditionally associated with women: maintaining a circle of friends and contacts, sharing information (gossiping) both superficial and profound and tweaking your public image.
Gender differences are as prevalent online as they are offline, says danah boyd. Social networks just formalize this process. What used to be too personal to be shared publicly is getting smaller and smaller.
Privilege has a lot to do with our online identities. Julia Angwin says she thinks it is a privilege to be able to live your life so publicly online, but the problem is that there is no way to tune your online identities. There are too few protected spaces, where everyone shares the same rules of engagement, for conversation and interaction. Another issue of online identity is that you aren’t allowed to be as multifaceted as you are in your real life, which is a right Second Wave feminists established. Unitary identity, Angwin says, means you’re forced into what a Google search of your name turns up.
Quotes: “”If you do not take diversity (gender, sexual orientation, race, economic background) into account, then you limit yourself on a building and business level.” “The act of being yourself is what makes the world safe.”—Heather Cole
Takeaways: Hire people who think differently than you. Honor the safe spaces that do exist online.
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