womenspacework - Statement

The initial euphoria about the new technological possibilities of producing space in highly industrialized societies necessarily has to be modified, especially if it is considered from a feminist point of view. This critical perspective concerns several sets of questions without ignoring the possibilities of virtual space for women. The questions are based on the issue of gender and on a critical approach to the production of space within the media from a female point of view. The major issue here is how and where we can find a position within these changing constructions now and in the future despite all differences. This issue concerns both feminist theories and strategies if we claim to be able to actively react to social processes and have an impact on them instead of just passively accepting them.

Matters

Without trying to exaggerate the implications of the etymological origin of the term "virtual" (1) the word becomes more poignant when associated with the term "material" which can be derived from the Latin word for mother, "mater". The complex interaction of those terms can be seen especially when you consider "virtual" as characteristic of technologically constructed realities. Such forms of constructed realities have been produced both by photography and film and are now created by digital images. The technological processes involved multiply our range of realities and alter our perceptive senses. There's no singular, objective reality anymore, the authentic original leaves the safe realm of ritual (2) as shown by Walter Benjamin when he wrote about art in the age of popular culture and mass production. By producing new extended forms of communication and novel methods of management and control as well as by creating new space these technologies not only concern economic, societal and social issues but can also change traditional conceptions of space.
Virtual space based on text, moving pictures, stills and sound can be electronically produced. The internet describes a conglomerate for net structures based on a common technology. Yet it is only the beginning of a process trying to create total "Virtual Environment". David Cronenberg's film "eXistenZ" (3) shows us the difficulties and illusions accompanying a situation of such a totality. You would not be able to differentiate between realities in a perfect "Cyberspace", in fact. However, this insight about different realities existing is not new since philosophy and spiritual belief of antique and contemporary cultures as well as sciences as for example physics have all been noting the limitations of dominant conceptions of reality and space in the Western world.

Tools

No matter what neoliberal and globalizing politics promise: the new virtual worlds are primarily tools. Although generally used as tools for information dissemination they are still not used to produce a form of space involving all senses and creating a completely virtual physical environment in everyday life. Virtual space still makes us feel the difference between immediate bodily experience, personal encounter and the technological interface represented by processor, screen and keyboard. On a more subtle level virtuality will have an impact on our perceptive, mental and spiritual capacities. Take for instance a kid encountering a frog on virtual terms. The kid can skin the frog, find its inner organs and its skeleton, then reassemble it. One day the kid encounters a "real" frog without knowing the difference and acknowledging the frog's "authenticity"...

Accessibilities

Accessibility to the new informational and discourse space provided by the WWW is one of the central issues in this context. Here, the gap between first and third world countries as well as socially, politically and culturally conditioned gender differences is obvious. Although an increasing number of women uses the net (4) it is still doubtful whether the global dissemination of informational technologies helps to reduce prevailing differences of gender, class and ethnic background. Already we can see an opposing tendency: the gap between those having access to virtual space and those who don't gets larger (5). These differences can be spatially perceived on an urban level as well (6).
Despite the global spreading of information technologies within so-called "global cities", such as New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Frankfurt or Paris still play an increasingly dominant role in this process. The hierarchical structures in those places augment the differences and expand the gap not only between individual countries and urban centers but within these very centers themselves. This can be seen for example in New York City where Manhattan is dominating the rest of the city in terms of virtual reality. So-called "network ghettos" start to grow in the cities and economic and informational power structures concentrate and form monopolies in urban downtown areas only, as it still seems to be necessary to keep in personal touch and to keep up and extend existing economic structures. So we are confronted with a paradox of an ever accelerating network crossing all national and geographical borders while at the same time economically undeveloped areas become even less involved (7). Traditionally used terms such as "building", "city", "nation" and "continent" have to be redefined in the context of these new geographical structures.

Defenses

Even within virtual territories there is a problem of accessibility and dominance. Information management, the individual search for and the selecting of information will be of more and more importance. Differences in education and class, ethnic background (8) and gender specific upbringing, standardization and access to economic resources (9) are other important factors. Also, there's the question of changes going on in the network. We can observe a tendency of increasing commercialization as there are more and more territories in the expanses of virtual space which can only be accessed via gateways and portals you have to pay for. The measures taken by companies as AOL or Microsoft to defend their commercially organized empires get more and more extensive as can be seen in the recurrent national and international discussions about questions of websecurity and defense strategies against hackers and computer viruses. Based on the principles of Western functionalist town planning, these virtual empires consist of surfaces created according to the laws of market economy, which offer pre-organized, preselected and therefore regulated platforms of information.
The virtual platforms remind us of shopping malls and downtown industrial structures we can find at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin for example. Both, virtual as well as non-virtual places pretend to be public urban space, although they are more and more privately ruled. The power to make decisions and the rights of disposal are in their owners' hands instead of being run by municipal institutions or the public. By getting more and more popular the net will be increasingly more restricted by a policy aiming at splitting up the net space, its infrastructur and global networking system into exclusive hierarchically organized territories. This process is well-know from "concrete" reality.
The question of who owns the land is most virulently discussed in both rural and urban areas and a determining factor in their development. The issue is a vital one as can be seen in the numerous fights about ownership of land and rights of accessibility in many countries and cities worldwide.

Cyberdemocracies

On the other hand virtual space offers an opportunity to develop and establish new forms of participation, communication and networking. One of the best known examples of a virtually created city is "De Digitale Stad", the digital city of Amsterdam in Holland, which was founded in 1994. A significant motivation for its foundation had been the low poll results among the citizens of Amsterdam. Based on the ideal concept of democratic participation possibilities and urban conditions of living, the digital city was created to offer a virtual, adaptable, urban platform for its inhabitants and visitors. A central aim is to have an influence on the local municipal politics. In the digital city you have a network of city activities, chatrooms and virtual representatives of local initiatives. However, there are gender differences even here.
Although Amsterdam is one of those cities with the most computerized households in Europe, the largest part of the inhabitants and visitors of the digital city is young, male and well educated (10), despite a rising proportional share of 16% of women. The reasons for that still have to be more elaborately analysed. It's a fact though that the web is mostly used as a medium for democratic participation by increasingly younger and primarily white men.

Structures

Another problem concerns the introduction of new technologies for production and reproduction. This issue addresses mostly women still held responsible for the reproduction sector (11). Toni Negri, among others, defined the term "immaterial work" (12), describing a sense of work that has been established in the course of the introduction of new technologies in the postindustrial era. This describes an integrative approach to the subject in the production process which combines ideas and creativity, intelligent and intellectual capacities. The automation of work increases the competitve struggle for jobs. Women confronted with triple socialization (13) are disadvantaged even if they decide to not do the reproductive work at home. We can see that when considering the suppression of East German women on the market after reunification. Also the small number of women in the new media, information and computer technology, especially in the fields of training and content development, points to a difficult situation for women trying to be independent (14). Worldwide, we can observe a generally increasing poverty among women despite all economic and social differences (15). This means that independent and self-determined forms of life are made impossible for women despite those differences (16).
So virtual space will go on to be primarily owned and controlled by privileged, mostly white males just as non-virtual space (17). Hence, women will have to go on fighting for their rights, interests and claims there as well.

Strategies

So the issue of a possible appropriation of space or places includes virtual space as well as non-virtual, material places. Strategically seen this appropriation of space will be more successful if theory and action are combined. This process has been a significant factor of the New Feminist Movement (which includes the feminist movements in Latin America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Asia). The combination of theory and experience produces the social and spatial dimensions so necessary to their female inhabitants and the world in general.
Theoretical insights can only work if they leave their hermetically academic surroundings and become part of an open discourse. Yet insights found in a practical context go even further than that. Ideas and concepts by radical feminists such as Kate Millet or Monique Wittig (almost forgotten by now and never academically accepted) had been formulated in such a context. The centre of their analyses was based on political dimensions. They meant changes by that: changes of society, its institutions and of women themselves. The intensity of the discussions about their theories did not only derive from their novelty but also their claim for universality and their penetrating insights. The substance of their analysis which had been so severely discussed did not only include ignoring geographical borders and getting interdisciplinary but also defining the gender of "women" as a form of class. Such an approach inevitably simplified things, a fact which had been legitimately criticized and modified later on. Thus, feminist theories and practice have been reworked and continued in different contexts and - admittedly - not always voluntarily.
The introduction of feminist theories in national and international academic life and their (often marginal) acceptance in various academic disciplines was only made possible (and still is) by adapting them (18). The efforts to establish feministically oriented theories academically and to professionalize them according to the standards of academic mainstream by individual women and women's groups have been resulting in a general inclusion of feminist theories in academic institutions, at least so in Germany, Europe and the U.S. Hence, feminist theory has been completely separated from feminist activities, a fact critically noted as well by Gerda Lerner (19). By defining and establishing feminist theory as distinguished from other academic disciplines the radical political stance was lost. If we define politics according to Hannah Arendt as speaking/thinking and acting it is obvious that we have to construct a certain form of space and structures where such political activities can be articulated and practiced, if we not only want to accomplish specific and particular interests but try to achieve basic social changes.

Practices

The New Women's Movement has been trying to create new practices and forms of space more or less successfully. These projects had been more or less difficult depending on the national or local situation or kind of society. The New Women's Movement in the Western world has been criticized as a white and bourgeois movement not reflecting their own centrisms enough. Contemporary political activities by women/lesbians are completely heterogenous and structured as well as organized in different ways according to the conditions in each country. This fact has a strong impact on feminist politics (20).

At this moment we can perceive three different tracks along which feminist politics by women/lesbians are moving. In the following paragraph I'll roughly summarize them notwithstanding the differences between the local situations of the different countries.
The first track concerns projects mostly realized as non-profit organisations. They include women-oriented NGO's, women and lesbian projects, initiatives and groups of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, which primarly work on a local scale. Most of them are organized as self-help groups offering support, advice and encouragement. They range from projects supporting empowerment of women, women and lesbian politics, feminist research, women's history, etc. to projects fighting poverty, sexual violence against women and girls, women's homelessness, to projects supporting education, professional training and employment as well as promoting art and cultural production.
The academic world is another concern of feminist politics. In many universities, mostly in the U.S., we can now find centers and networks for feminist research cooperating locally and sometimes even internationally, thereby establishing gender studies and feminist research as an academically accepted discipline (21).
The third part of women's (rarely lesbians') political activities occur in local, state-run institutions or political parties as well as in economic organisations (unions, associations and production plants) with a chance of establishing it (22).

Spaceworks

Women are affected socially and economically by the neoliberalist reorganization of the dominant economies and the national states' increasing abandonment of their social and cultural responsibilities including the gradual privatization of those responsibilites and infrastructures. Although internationally there are obvious differences between women increasing the gap between the winners and losers of these rearrangements, the necessitity for consolidating the political goals already achieved becomes apparent. This comprises opposing the processes supporting individualization and the abolition of solidarity as well as continuing to establish the rights to and accessibilities on all social, political and cultural levels.
To go one step further means to undertake new efforts and to create new strategies and forms of space. This, however, meets with a lot of difficulties, oppositions and contradictions, even within "our own ranks" and depending on individual perspectives.

After a period of negotiating the differences between and differentiation among women making the need for a deconstruction of the category of gender and for new forms of identity politics apparent, I suppose it is about time to think about new alliances and to form new coalitions. We have to bear the differences between women and accept the diverse political strategies and practices being used now and in the future. This includes the mutual exchange of feminist theories and practices by establishing new communication and information structures integrating both theory and practical experience. Also the specific fields of work have to be open towards other disciplines and areas of work. I think that at this point of time we will get more courageous, break conventions and form new coalitions, even if the new concepts won't be realized immediately (23). I don't want to condemn a step-by-step policy, but I do think we have a right to think in utopian or heterotopian ideas and concepts of space.

There was a sense of this kind of radical thought during the first phase of the New Women's Movement. It's about time to recapture this sense, even though the circumstances are different this time. Otherwise we are in danger of being overrun by these new processes which might result in our ideas, political activities and herstories getting more and more rudimentary. Maybe we should remember to be the part that throws a spanner in the works of society instead of making every effort to become an accepted part of society. But everyone has to make their own decisions.

Forms of (cultural) mediation

I already mentioned a necessary form of mediation: overcoming disciplinary borders and opening up the ivory tower of academic institutions to include political and cultural activities and practices. Such a project cannot be managed by the individual alone. We have to find explicit forms of space and infrastructure for that. There are already some examples we could go back to and modify to meet our ends. In non-virtual space there was the U.S.American WomanActionCoalition (WAC) and the Berlin Frauensommeruniversität (Berlin Women's Summer University),which had been offering a platform for active women from all kinds of theoretical and practical backgrounds for years. Other examples of non-feminist political activities are the organised opposition against the WTO conference in Seattle, the mobilization of large parts of the population to fight the neofascist FP� party which is forming a coalition with the ruling party in Austria or the initiative of "raison d'agir" trying to combine the various social movements in Europe. All these activities are organized via the internet/www. While usually all kinds of groups have formed through the internet, in the case of Austria, we find that particularly artists were coordinating the almost daily protests and offer relevant platforms. It's interesting to note how virtual and discoursive activities interact with local activism. While virtual space was used as a forum for verbally expressing yourself, political action has been carried directly into non-virtual urban space as an activism using "classical" forms of protest in order to make itself heard.

Many academic institutes for gender studies as well as women's and lesbians' projects, initiatives and groups can already be found in the net. The question is now whether more local and international platforms can be installed to ensure that feminist oriented theories and practices can be combined and continue to develop.

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last modified : 08.03.2004
© 2001 Yvonne P. Doderer, Stuttgart and authors
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