Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, pp.

409–421, 2001
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(IN)FORMING POLITICS: PROCESSES OF FEMINIST

ACTIVISM IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Anne Scott
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand

Synopsis — How is feminist activism changing in the information age? This article argues that the char-
acter, membership, and direction of activist movements can be strongly influenced by the nature of the
everyday, material practices through which their activities are conducted. It analyses some implications
of recent developments in electronically mediated communications, arguing that these both create a
pressing need for—and provide us with the means to create—a diversified, transnational, feminist
movement. Several issues arising from feminist deployments of information and communication tech-
nology are explored. These include inequalities in access to these technologies, the need to develop
“feminist” ways of working within electronically mediated networks, the problem of information over-
load, and the issues raised for feminists by the ongoing commodification of information. © 2001
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION derstandings of time, space, and place, they

state, are being remade (Adam, 1995; Castells,
How should we understand feminist action
1996). If these claims are correct, it seems that,
and feminist activism1 in the information age?
inevitably, the material basis of our social and
It has become commonplace to claim that we
political activity will be transformed over the
are living through a period of dramatic and
next few years.
far-reaching sociotechnical change—partially
I’d like to focus in this article on one partic-
instigated by rapid developments in informa-
ular angle—relating to material, bodied, pro-
tion and communication technology (ICT). A
cess—in approaching the question with which I
number of commentators have argued that the
started. It is a truism to state that all events are
“information revolution” is transforming our
rooted in particular times, places, and spaces.
ways of using information, of managing geo-
Social activism is thus a material and corporeal
graphical and temporal boundaries, of commu-
process; it is bodied—enmeshed in a set of so-
nicating, of experiencing our own corporeality,
ciotechnical artefacts, institutional networks,
and of working with others. See, for example,
and everyday activities.2 It is my argument that
the “Information Age” series by Manuel Cas-
the shape and quality of this materiality influ-
tells (1996, 1997, 1998), as well as Sherry
ences the ultimate success or failure of all so-
Turkle’s influential discussion of identity is-
cio-political movements. Moreover, it seems
sues in relation to the new communications
that material processes can act in subtle, and
technologies (Turkle, 1996). Traditional un-
not so subtle, ways to construct the character
of these movements; I will argue in this article
that this influence extends beyond peripheral
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the UK
Women’s Studies Network Conference (July 1999), the matters of process to substantive issues of po-
University of Bradford’s “Gendering the globalisation litical ideology, leadership, and direction.
debate” seminar series (Nov. 1999), and the University of This article is based on three sources of em-
Canterbury’s sociology seminar series (April 2000); thanks to pirical data, collected over a period of a year.
the participants at these events for their useful feedback.
Thanks to Clare Beckett and Libby Wrighton for their
These include interviews with five, British-
helpful comments, and also to workshop participants at the based, feminist activists working on a national
“Online for Change?” and the Women Connect conferences. or international level—primarily on issues re-

409
410 Anne Scott
lating to peace/war and violence against
women. Four of these activists make substan-
tial use of electronic forms of communication;
the fifth is currently challenging government
abuses of this new technology. The interviews
were conducted in the summer of 1999. My
second source of information arises from an
email discussion list established, in late 1999,
by the “Women and Media working group,” a
collaborative effort by WomenAction and Wom-
enWatch.3 The “Women-Media list” devoted its
first few weeks to issues relating specifically to
the new communications technologies, generat-
ing a lively international discussion. A third
source of data arises from my (research) in-
volvement with Women Connect—a CDF/LA
project which, in its first phase, linked 20
women’s organisations in a learning commu-
nity with the aim of enabling “women to use
and shape the net together” (Page & Scott,
1999b).4 I have been working with one of the
co-directors of Women Connect to address the-
oretical issues arising from the project (Page &
Scott, 2000), and have drawn on relevant expe-
riences from it in this article. I have also been
assisted in my thinking by the discussion at
three conference workshops on feminist poli-
tics and the Internet.5
With the exception of the Women-Media
contributions, all of my data has been British-
based—albeit some drawn from individuals
and organisations engaged in international ac-
tivism. One of my themes in this article will be
the interplay of the local and the global in con-
temporary feminist activism. This article is, in
itself, an expression of this process; my con-
cerns are transnational, but my perspective
and analysis have local origins.
In this article, I want to consider four ques-
tions regarding process that may be helpful in
thinking about feminist activism in the infor-
mation age:
1. How do like-minded women find each
other, form cohesive networks, and become
motivated enough to make necessary sacri-
fices? On answers to this question hinge im-
portant outcomes relating to the inclusivity
and direction of feminist movements, and
even to their very existence.
2. How are spaces created in which these
groups of women can develop an ideology,
coalesce into “community,” and formulate
plans for material action? As Ruth Lister
has noted (Lister, 1997), citizenship as so-
cial and political agency—the right to par-
ticipation—is a socially constructed and
maintained good; it requires time, space,
money, sociocultural and material re-
sources, and relative bodily safety.
3. How do social movements become, and re-
main, visible to the wider world, and how is
this process now changing? Manuel Castells
has argued that “. . . in a society organised
around mass media, the existence of mes-
sages that are outside the media is re-
stricted to interpersonal networks, thus dis-
appearing from the collective mind” (1996,
p. 336). The mutually constituting relation-
ships of public and private, of centre and
periphery, and of global and local, are
closely tied up with this question.
4. How do social movements effect policy
changes, influence decision makers, build
institutions, and—more generally—bring
about sustainable social change?
In this article, I will first describe the theo-
retical framework in which I am conceptualis-
ing ICT as a technology. I will then relate three
stories from different historical eras, drawing
out some of the ways in which a focus on tech-
nologies can help us to answer the above ques-
tions. After going on to argue that we need a
transnational feminism that can address the
consequences of globalisation, I will go on to
discuss some issues that may arise in feminists’
use of ICT. Finally, I will raise some concep-
tual questions regarding the notion of “infor-
mation” as it is currently being elaborated
within feminist practice.
WHAT IS “TECHNOLOGY,” AND WHY
IS IT IMPORTANT?
Why should we look at process issues relating
to feminist activism with a particular focus on
technology? An obvious danger in such a
project is that we might lapse into some form
of technological determinism. This fallacy,
however, rests on a “technicist” assumption
that technologies are simply objects, or arte-
facts (Grint & Woolgar, 1997), and that these
“things” are not, in themselves, contributing to
the performance of gender relations (Ormrod,
1995). By contrast, I am conceptualising tech-
nologies as networked processes. In this arti-
cle, I will draw on Saskia Everts’ definition:
 Feminist Activism in the Information Age
What is to be called “technology” is the total
package of this artefact plus the organisa-
tional, informational, and human contexts
that are required for its functioning. Taking
this into account, technology will be defined
as the human-made artefacts/processes and
their social contexts that are geared towards
enhancing human capabilities (Everts, 1998,
pp. 5–6).
The “heterogeneous engineering” Everts
describes includes objects, social practices, or-
ganisational structures, cultural values, and in-
stitutional infrastructure. Like her, I will be
drawing on a modified version of actor net-
work theory (Latour, 1993; Law & Hassard,
1999). Actor network theory tends to draw on
a discursive, if thoughtfully materialised, un-
derstanding of “power” which, as Cynthia
Cockburn notes, conceptualises power in
terms of “capacity” rather than “domination”
(Cockburn, 1992, p. 42). I think the theory
needs to be modified to incorporate a notion
of power as access to resources, or to various
types of “capital” (Weekes & MacDermott,
1995; Skeggs, 1997).
It makes sense, therefore, to talk about
technosocial networks rather than “technolo-
gies”; we can thus encompass both material
and discursive concerns. Technosocial net-
works are a way of deploying social and cul-
tural power (Latour, 1993). The operation of
this power, however, looks very different when
viewed from the periphery, rather than the
centre:
By experience and affinity, some of us begin
not with Pasteur, but with the monster, the
outcast . . .. We have usually been the dele-
gated to, the disciplined. Our selves are thus
in two senses monstrous selves, cyborgs, im-
pure, first in the sense of uniting split selves
and secondly in the sense of being that which
goes unrepresented in encounters with tech-
nology (Star, 1991, p. 29).
Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and
Michel Callon, Susan Leigh Star has described
the way heterogeneous interests can be pulled
together into “mini-empires,” enrolling both
human and nonhuman actors into new tech-
nosocial networks (Star, 1991). Once stabi-
lised, these networks begin to shape our social
landscape, grounding each and every social ac-
411
tion and movement. She (re)names as “politics
by other means” (Haraway, 1986) the process
by which—their once divergent parts disci-
plined—these new networks are made stable
and, seemingly, irreversible. Within these net-
works, new sets of physical-social conventions
are established which, being unstable for non-
members, also create new forms of marginal-
ity. Star’s point is that the new conventions
and practices associated with ICT may act to
further marginalise or disadvantage women.
This view has also been put forward by other
commentators (Green, Owen, & Pain, 1993;
Morahan-Martin, 1998; Spender, 1995).
The “information society”—as a technoso-
cial network—is taking shape before our eyes.
On what terms are women being enrolled into
this network? In what ways are their needs and
interests being translated into new technocul-
tural forms? What impact will the develop-
ment of an “information society” have on
those women who are without access to hard-
ware, software and training? How will femi-
nists experience the process of social activism
within this technosocial network? After all, as
Star notes, “Every enrolment entails both a
failure to enroll and a destruction of the world
of the non-enrolled” (Star, 1991, p. 49).
Although these questions are being ener-
getically debated at the moment (Harcourt,
1999a; Hawthorne & Klein, 1999; Spender,
1995), I would like to suggest that many of the
issues being raised are not new. In the next
section, I will briefly describe the technosocial
networks in which British feminists, in two
Victorian time periods, were operating. I will
then look at a contemporary example of femi-
nist activism—the Beijing conference of 1995.
I will argue that we cannot maintain a firm
separation between the material processes
through which activists work and the character
of the movements they create.
THREE FEMINIST MOMENTS
In early 19th-century Britain, some members
of the Owenite Socialist movement developed
radical views on marriage/divorce, secularism,
the household, women’s agency, and “free
love” (Scott, 1996; Taylor, 1983). Disseminat-
ing these views, however, was not easy, and in-
stitutionalising them within the British polity
proved to be impossible. The generally plebe-
ian Owenites were—barring a few privately
412 Anne Scott
printed pamphlets—largely dependent on
bodied communication in the form of public
meetings, debates, and placarding. Most Owen-
ites did not have the vote, independent capital,
or direct access to policy makers. Thus, there
were very heavy costs—in “respectability,”
material comfort and bodily safety—for women
engaging in the—sometimes riotous—public
speaking,6 or living in the utopian communi-
ties, which were the primary means of expres-
sion for Owenite “feminist” politics.
Just 2 decades later, members of Britain’s
Langham Place Group were able to take ad-
vantage of a newly enlarged print media, and
the newly developed postal and rail infrastruc-
ture, to engage in lobbying and institution
building (Lacey, 1987; Levine, 1994).7 Easier,
cleaner, and more respectable means of estab-
lishing contact with potential colleagues, and
of publicising women’s concerns, had emerged;
this period saw a large influx of upper and
middle-class women into feminist activism
(Levine, 1994; Shanley, 1993).
The Langham Place women possessed social
and cultural capital;8 they were capable of act-
ing at the level at which political and institu-
tional power was held, and they took advan-
tage of this to establish lasting, mainstream,
institutions. They have been derided, however,
for the conservatism, and for the class bias, of
their social and political thought. Unlike the
more colourful Owenite feminists, they did not
generally discuss sexuality in public, did not
press for contraception, did not attempt to leg-
islate for divorce on demand, did not challenge
the precedence of Christianity and, certainly,
they did not advocate dissolution of the nuclear
family. Their dependence on friendship/kinship
networks within the British middle and upper
classes, and on having articles published in elite
journals, severely constrained their freedom of
expression. The Owenite feminists, by contrast,
drew larger crowds—and garnered more atten-
tion—when making controversial public state-
ments on issues relating to sexuality, marriage,
and religion. In these two feminist movements,
then, technologies of communication were in-
tegrally connected with the social background
of their most visible actors, their political out-
look, and their ultimate effectiveness.
I’d now like to tell a story concerning the
UN Fourth World Conference on Women
held, in 1995, in Beijing. This conference fol-
lowed the strengthening of global feminist net-
works in the wake of the Nairobi UN confer-
ence in 1985. As Alice Gittler notes:
The Beijing process differed from previous
women’s world conferences in both scale and
approach. The global women’s movement
had grown in numbers and influence. It had
been 10 years since the movement had come
together on a global scale. Women’s NGOs
were determined to make their concerns and
demands known to governments and the
world, and to facilitate the participation of as
many women as possible in the process (Git-
tler, 1999, p. 94).
The electronic media provided a set of tools
that could make this happen. Women were
able to obtain draft versions of the Platform for
Action via email, gopher, conferencing, the
World Wide Web, and fax. Regional caucuses
were held in every part of the world, with
women drafting additions, deletions and amend-
ments, circulating information, and mobilising
support. Gittler notes that NGOs in some
countries were better informed than their na-
tional delegations: “Discussions previously re-
served for a few governmental delegates and
observers at the United Nations were now
open to anyone able to access the medium”
(Gittler, 1999, p. 95). There were major prob-
lems, of course. Many women did not have ac-
cess to the equipment, reliable telephone lines,
and Internet access needed to participate di-
rectly. Much on-line information was available
only in English. Those without direct access, or
enough time of their own, had to rely on fil-
tered information distributed by others.
Nevertheless, the events surrounding Beijing
were unprecedented. Thousands of women
were able to participate in the UN process, to
make their voices heard, to use this event to
mobilise support, and to lobby their own gov-
ernments. Women who could not attend the
conference could, nevertheless, follow proceed-
ings (Harcourt, 1999b). There were 100,000 vis-
its to the APC’s Beijing Website, and the IWTC
reached several hundred more groups by fax
and e-mail (Gittler, 1999).
Feminists in many developing countries put
great energy into organising around the Beijing
conference, and they made their voices heard
on the world stage in a way that was qualita-
tively new (Gittler, 1999; Harcourt, 1999a). In
addition to its major impact on the outcome of
 Feminist Activism in the Information Age
the main event, the NGO event which ran
alongside the Beijing conference contributed
to the development of a new global conscious-
ness surrounding women’s issues (Page, 1997;
Harcourt, 1999b). Reverberations from the
communications “revolution” in Beijing con-
tinue to be felt.9 Feminism can no longer be re-
alistically presented as a white, middle-class,
Western, phenomenon; some cyberfeminists
argue that electronic communications have fa-
cilitated the creation of a truly international
feminist movement. When discussing ICT for
example, Lourdes Arizpe recently suggested
that “Feminism has created a global room of
our own” (1999, p. xiv).
IS CYBERFEMINIST OPTIMISM
JUSTIFIED?
Accounts like the one above are used by some
cyberfeminists (Light, 1995; Pollock & Sutton,
1999) to argue that ICT is an inherently
democratising technology (Scott, Semmens, &
Willoughby, 1999). Clearly, ICT can provide
new and powerful tools in relation to three of
the process questions raised at the beginning
of this article. It is now easier to make contact
with like-minded people (Korenman, 1999). It
is also easier to find information about an issue
which, it might be said, should increase the
motivation for activism. With the advent of
web publishing, it is easier and cheaper to
make movements visible (Castells, 1997; Pat-
tanaik, 1999). Safe discussion spaces can be
created; this is of particular benefit to women
living in isolated places (Lennie, Grace, Daws,
& Simpson, 1999). When discussing rural femi-
nist activism in Croatia, one of my respondents
noted that, “. . . the risk-taking, I think, is
about being in a small community . . . and what
people think of you within a small community”
(R2, 1999). For isolated feminist activists, the
national and international networks created
on the World Wide Web, or via the telephone,
can be life-transforming (Arizpe, 1999).
If three conditions for successful activism
are now easier to achieve, we have a seeming
paradox. Why are social inequalities now wid-
ening? Why is poverty being feminised on a
global scale (United Nations Development
Programme, 1999)? Why are women becoming
refugees and migrants in unprecedented num-
bers (Pettman, 1996; United Nations Develop-
ment Programme, 1999)? Why is a backlash
413
against women’s reproductive freedoms in
process (Bandarage, 1997; Berer & Ravindran,
1996)? Although the process may be more
congenial, it is not clear that the contemporary
efforts of feminist activists are bearing more
fruit than they have in the past. The fourth
question I raised earlier—how do we influence
the actions of decision makers—thus seems to
be the crucial one at this time.
ICT provides feminist activists with new
and powerful tools, but like all technologies,
these tools are, themselves, changing the social
landscape in which they are used. In relation
to reproductive technology, Elisabeth Beck-
Gernsheim has argued that technology is
never neutral:
the development of new reproductive technol-
ogies not only produces new options, it also
eradicates old ones; it creates not only free-
doms, but also new pressures, controls and de-
pendencies (Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, p. 22).
The argument also applies to ICT; new
technologies act to shift social choices as much
as they act to enlarge them. They increase the
capabilities of different social groups by differ-
ing amounts and in different ways, thus chang-
ing the way power relations are expressed.
Technologies act reflexively, affecting the
structuring of their environment, and of them-
selves, in complex and unpredictable ways; it is
thus impossible, in principle, to foresee all the
effects of introducing a new technological
practice (Everts, 1998). The technosocial land-
scape, in relation to ICT, is currently changing
enormously quickly; as new (techno)practices
are introduced they are also, to paraphrase Su-
san Leigh Star’s earlier point (Star, 1995), de-
stroying previously existing worlds.
Internet-based culture is acting, without
doubt, as standard bearer for a globalised, tech-
nocratic society in which economic inequalities
are widened, the space for local cultures is re-
duced, American English is squeezing out
other languages, human and environmental re-
sources are ever more comprehensively ex-
ploited, and the so-called “democratic deficit”
is becoming enormously problematic. After
two centuries of work to widen the franchise,
we now find economic, social, and cultural
power moving increasingly from the institu-
tions of representative democracy to transna-
tional financial institutions and TNCs (Jacobs,
414 Anne Scott
2000; Loader, 1997, 1998; Martin & Schumann,
1996). The information society is not, for the
most part, being developed by women . . . or
with women’s needs foremost in mind. Sus-
anna George, a contributor to WomenAction’s
“women-and-media” list from Isis Interna-
tional in Manila, drew an analogy with the
growth of the colonial enterprise and its mani-
festations:
These technologies open up routes for multi-
national business transaction, and whatever
alternative communications between social
movements and individuals is in some senses
like the little canoes that flow on major wa-
terways dredged for the movement of oil
tankers . . .the challenge for us should en-
compass some of the broader questions of
control and hegemony, fully cognizant of the
role of ICT in empire building of a different
sort (George: women-media, 1999).
Communications technologies may be help-
ing to catalyse the development of a global
feminist movement, but they are also facilitat-
ing the worst aspects of globalisation.
With socio-economic power increasingly
being held at transnational level, it is impera-
tive that a transnational feminism—which can
act coherently and effectively at these levels—
also be developed. In this new “politics of
place” we will, according to Wendy Harcourt,
need to nurture and sustain our diverse local
networks, but will also need a means by which
they can tap into global networks (Harcourt,
1999b). If we are to use ICT to build “glocal”
politics, however, we must address several
thorny issues regarding equality of access to
ICT, relationship-building via the electronic
media, and the nature and status of “informa-
tion.” These will be the subjects of the next
two sections.
AN ICT PRACTICE FIT
FOR FEMINISTS . . .
As transnational feminist networks rely on the
use of electronic media, we must address the
serious inequalities in economic, social, and
cultural power which restrict access to these
technologies. This has been a recurring theme
within the women-media list discussions. Sev-
eral contributors noted that, particularly in ru-
ral areas, many people still have little access to
reliable telephone lines. A second theme in
these discussions is that the predominance of
English on ICT networks excludes speakers of
other languages. Several contributors—from
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Latin America, and sev-
eral other regions—identified this as the most
serious barrier faced by women in their locali-
ties. Lack of appropriate training presents an-
other barrier. The APC women’s programme
surveyed 700 women’s groups, world-wide, re-
garding the obstacles to ICT use they faced;
lack of appropriate training was identified as a
problem in all regions, while in Europe and
North America it was the obstacle most often
cited (Farwell, Wood, James, & Banks, 1999).
The “access” problem does not relate sim-
ply to individual women’s ability to use the
technology, but also to the capacity of
women—as a group—to shape the emerging
technology to their own approach and their
own ends (Cockburn, 1992; Scott et al., 1999;
Star, 1991). As Awatef Ketiti notes, the fact
that women find themselves part of a “minor-
ity elite” in the world of technology makes it
difficult for them to make their presence felt,
or to change its dominant practices (Ketiti:
women-media, 1999).10
The question of access is not, however, as
straightforwardly problematic as it may first
seem; economic resources do not, alone, deter-
mine who makes use of ICT. Access problems,
for example, have limited the development of
ICT-based activism in otherwise well-con-
nected Britain; one of my respondents noted
that, as not everybody has access to e-mail, the
telephone and fax are more inclusive forms of
communication (R3: 1999). Most women’s
NGOs in the urbanised areas of Indonesia, by
contrast, do use the Internet—the expense and
difficulty associated with other types of com-
munication has been a powerful driver for
change (Liang: women-media, 1999). Luz
Maria Martinez, of ISIS-International, notes
that women may be in the majority among In-
ternet users in some of the more developed
East Asian countries (Martinez: women-me-
dia, 1999). Feminist activists in the former Yu-
goslavia were making use of the Internet by
the latter part of the 1980s—well before most
email networks developed in Western Europe.
When the war started [the Women in Black]
all found that communication was cut off,
and that they weren’t actually able to speak
 Feminist Activism in the Information Age
to each other. Quite crazy, because that is
quite important . . . making links across bor-
ders. Somewhere, somebody along the line
thought of an email network. To become
part of the network, you had to be an activist
that was interested in peace and against na-
tionalism and all those things. They called it
Zamia, which means “For peace,” and it
grew to be really quite extensive across
former Yugoslavia (R2: 1999).
Feminist activists can be creative in finding
ways to acquire, adapt, and use the technolo-
gies they need—at least at basic levels. Al-
though rightly struggling for universal access to
ICT and better translation services on the Web,
we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be pushed into
painting an oversimplified and homogenous
picture of women’s exclusion, victimisation,
and passivity in regards to ICT.
A second issue relates to the quality of work-
ing relationships conducted, primarily, via elec-
tronic networks: how do we create and maintain
relationships of trust when using less directly
bodied forms of communication? Second-wave
feminists sloganeered that the personal and the
political could not be separated, and built organ-
isational structures and practices which reflected
this insight (Kaplan, 1996; Riordan, 1999; Rad-
ford, 1995). Some of these practices must be
amended when used with electronic forms of
communication. This issue has been continually
addressed, for example, within Women Connect
(Page & M. Scott, 1999a; Page & A. Scott, 2000).
Several of my respondents described difficul-
ties in trying to conduct “feminist” politics on an
international scale; how can working styles de-
veloped for local, personally mediated, groups
be applied in networks spanning the globe?
I work out of an environment here in Glas-
gow. You know, the women involved in the
networks I work in . . . one of the networks—
WISE—is into Scottish politics. And we take
that elsewhere. And certainly I’m keyed into
a lot of other networks. But say a lesbian
friend in Belgrade . . . she’s keyed into her
network in Belgrade or something . . . So it’s
an interpersonal relationship thing. If you
don’t know yourself you couldn’t give your-
self to someone else. And in the same way if
you’re not rooted in your own politics, in
your own locality, there’s nothing to give,
you know (R1: 1999).
415
Feminist activists must consider more than
the size and output of activist networks; the
type of relationship-building they facilitate is
also important.
My respondents all argued that working re-
lationships could not usually be sustained with
telecommunication links alone; a similar atti-
tude emerged in members’ evaluations of
Women Connect (Page & Scott, 1999a). Two
of my respondents (R1 and R2: 1999) de-
scribed the regular use of peace camps to build
interpersonal relationships amongst feminists
using the Internet to work on South-Eastern
European issues. Another respondent (R3:
1999) described a well-elaborated structure of
local meetings, open meetings, and rotating
national meetings to maintain interpersonal
working relationships in the Britain-wide “Jus-
tice for Women” organisation. The women of
the Menwith Hill peace camp make little use
of e-mail, preferring to work together at
ground level (R5: 1999). Women Connect built
in face-to-face visits, training events and net-
working days, particularly in the early stages of
the project (Page & Scott, 1999a). As one ac-
tivist relying heavily on e-mail noted, “. . . it’s
the friendship networks that underlie all this”
(R1: 1999).
Face-to-face meetings play a role in intro-
ducing new members to the tacit, nonarticu-
lated, knowledge grounding activist practice.
One activist described problems arising when
women using ICT had missed out on a political
apprenticeship in which they could learn di-
rectly from their own experience, and from
that of colleagues:
They can tap into email, or go to web pages.
But it doesn’t actually give them a deeper
understanding of some of the issues that are
involved. And I’ve found that can be quite
problematic. That in a meeting when you get
women who are planning to do something,
you actually have to deal with some of what I
would say are quite basic issues and explain
them to people that appear to be, superfi-
cially, quite well read around a particular is-
sue (R2: 1999).
These concerns point to specific problems in
integrating the very different pacing of elec-
tronic and “relationship” time (Adam, 1995).
They also point to issues regarding space and
place: how can we integrate immersion in par-
416 Anne Scott
ticular places with inhabitance of the world as a
whole? How do we create a transnational femi-
nist “community”?
Elsewhere, Margaret Page and I have ar-
gued that on-line communication is not enough,
in itself, to create community. In our analysis of
Women Connect’s learning community, we ar-
gued that community is a verb—something
women do—which involves the development of
shared projects, obligations and goals (Page &
Scott, 2000). Thus, feminist “community” re-
quires the development of commonality and
shared perceptions . . . at least to the extent that
it becomes possible to work together.
Transnational feminism encompasses, by
definition, ethnic, national, religious, sexual,
and class differences. As numerous analysts
have established, these social differences may
also be inequalities—constituted within histor-
ical relations of social domination (hooks,
1990; Phillips, 1999; Plumwood, 1993). Thus, as
Uma Narayan has noted, “good-will is not
enough” when working across difference
(1988, p. 34). We must understand that mem-
bers of differently located social groups may
see the world in strikingly variant ways; this is
a difference of knowledge—of “information”
embodied in everyday, material, practice.
[People in oppressed groups] have epistemic
privilege when it comes to immediate knowl-
edge of everyday life under oppression . . .
They know first-hand the detailed and con-
crete ways in which oppression defines the
spaces in which they live and how it affects
their lives (Narayan, 1988, p. 36).
Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) and Cynthia Cock-
burn (1999) have suggested that “transversal
feminism”— an approach that respects the irrec-
oncilability of certain differences—may permit
strategic and shifting alliances to be made across
difference. Although this approach is promising,
it remains to be seen whether it will suffice for
the more extensive—and cohesive—transna-
tional feminist practice which will be needed
when addressing globalised policy formations.
RETHINKING “INFORMATION”
In a world where it is no longer rare or difficult
to acquire, what is the nature, status, and value
of “information”? The sheer number of com-
munications now possible can, in itself, change
the nature of feminist activism. One respon-
dent returned from holiday to find over 1,000
e-mails waiting for her (R4: 1999). Similar pres-
sures were described by all of my respondents:
. . . it’s also created a lot of extra work.
Thinking about how much time we all spend
in front of the computer. And also the
amount of crud that you get on email as well,
which you have to filter through . . . it’s a bit
like housework, isn’t it? (R2: 1999).
While in the fairly recent past a paucity of re-
liable information and communications tended
to restrict feminist political activity, this situa-
tion may now have been reversed. Paradoxi-
cally, the speed and ease of telecommunica-
tions can produce overloading, swallowing up
the time and leisure of information age activ-
ists. This can actually block the political action
the electronic networks were expected to facil-
itate. At the beginning of the Kosovo war, for
example, ICT-based peace networks were or-
ganising political action; as the war proceeded
large quantities of information began coming
in, and the activist function of some networks
was, literally, squeezed out (R4: 1999).
Good information can facilitate the devel-
opment of a coherent analysis that motivates
activists and influences the wider world; on a
day-to-day level, the ability to travel and com-
municate across borders seems to be making
this task substantially easier. The ability of
Serbian and Kosovar women to work together
on documenting and presenting instances of
rape in war to the International War Crimes
Tribunal, for example, (R1: 1999) greatly in-
creased their credibility and effectiveness.
The sheer amount of information generated
by electronic communications, however, can
hinder the development of a coherent and co-
hesive “story.” One effect, of course, has been
to contribute to the fracturing of “feminist” ac-
counts themselves. Feminism is now acknowl-
edged by most commentators to be partial, di-
verse, and fractured (Anzaldúa, 1990; Basu,
1995; Mirza, 1997; Sebestyen, 1988; Wieringa,
1995). As the globalisation of feminism under-
mines the liberal individualist assumptions on
which Euro-American feminists once relied,
this diversity is increasing.
As one respondent noted, “information can
be a trap” (R5: 1999). The need to collect and
verify endless streams of information can de-
 Feminist Activism in the Information Age
mand time and energy. Expectations are being
raised, moreover, in regard to the quantity and
quality of information needed before a plausi-
ble case can be said to exist. As one respon-
dent noted, people want more and more infor-
mation before taking action. But there is a
point at which one has enough information to
act; the acquisition of more information be-
yond this point can be confusing and paralys-
ing—and can actually block the taking of ef-
fective action (R5: 1999).
One respondent described activism as in-
volving three legs of a triangle. The first leg is
action—direct, practical, effective, and nonvio-
lent. Information is the second leg; it is neces-
sary to get good information to the people who
can make best use of it. She described the third
leg as spirituality; thoughts, feelings and care
play a crucial role in the ultimate success of
any movement (R4: 1999). The problem, as
she saw it, is that our new-found facility with
the collection and transfer of information has
led us to overemphasise the second leg of the
triangle, at the expense of the two other, more
bodied, elements. This point has been echoed
by Pi Villanueva, a contributor to the women-
media list from ISIS-International in Manila,
who argued that:
The greatest technology we need to prevent
from becoming corrupted by the transna-
tional grip is our own minds. The electronic
extension of that only assists, if we don’t
mentally pay into the trap of that grip (Vil-
lanueva: women-media, 1999).
Information cannot, on its own, accomplish
anything. It must be grounded, and used,
within a context of strong relationships, with
purpose and direction, and with a sense of care
for colleagues, and the movement as a whole
(R4: 1999).
Finally, feminists may need to rethink the
process of informationalisation itself. We are
living through a period of aggressive capital ac-
cumulation, in which the body is being informa-
tionalised while information is, relentlessly, be-
ing commodified. As Pi Villanueva notes:
There is one thing that is common to all
women in this day and age of digitization and
miniaturization. We are all being mined for
information. The books that we write, the art
that we create, down to the genetic level of
417
our being. It does not matter where we live,
what we do; women’s bodies are being mined
for the minutest information that can be digi-
tized, databased, copyrighted, and sold for
profit (Villanueva: women-media, 1999).
The body, which was once seen within En-
lightenment ideologies as “private,” must be
understood very differently in the light of bio-
informatics, the new reproductive technolo-
gies, ICT technology, and the development of
virtual reality. Donna Haraway has analysed
this trend in detail, arguing that:
For us, the living world has become a com-
mand, control, communication, intelligence
system (C3I in military terms) in an environ-
ment that demands strategies of flexible ac-
cumulation . . . Not only does metaphor be-
come a research program, but also, more
fundamentally, the organism for us is an in-
formation system and an economic system of
a particular kind (Haraway, 1997, p. 97).
Information, whether it relates to so-called
“public” concerns, or to the intimate realms
of sexuality and reproduction, has become a
commodity. Arguments that the Internet is a
democratising space, or even a new public
sphere, have been invoked by some—prima-
rily male, white and North American—com-
mentators on the information society (Brown-
ing, 1996; Schuler, 1996; Rheingold, 1994);
these optimistic views, however, assume the
existence of an intellectual commons that re-
mains separate from private and particular in-
terests.11 In our globalised, privatised, world,
this commons does not exist; many feminist
commentators would argue, in fact, that it
never has existed (Harding, 1998; Lloyd, 1984;
Oakley, 2000).
Feminist activists have, historically, been
heavily orientated towards creating and dis-
seminating information. Does “information,”
however, mean something qualitatively new in
the heavily commodified “information soci-
ety” we now inhabit? If so, feminist “informa-
tion work” may produce unexpected results. It
is not yet clear what might be the conse-
quences of participating—on the old terms—in
a historically unprecedented situation. Cynthia
Gehrie, one contributor to the WomenAction
women-media list, noted that the sharing of
knowledge between women is nothing new:
418 Anne Scott
“Women have always shared our knowledge.
But we have almost never shared in its ‘devel-
opment.’ In fact, we watch silenced as our
knowledge is developed in contrary lines for
contrary purposes” (Gehrie: women-media,
1999).
CONCLUSION
How should we understand feminist activism
in the information age? It is, first of all, neither
disembodied nor immaterial—but is enmeshed
in the multiple technosocial networks ground-
ing material practice. The use of particular
technologies can act to exclude some social
groups, while facilitating the political involve-
ment of others. It can support some campaign-
ing strategies, while militating against others . . .
the use of particular strategies may then lead
to a focus on some “audiences” rather than
others. In this way, the content of a move-
ment’s politics can be indirectly shaped by the
technologies it deploys. Some technologies
lend themselves well to a slow and deliberate
pacing of action, with emphasis on intramove-
ment relationship building; others lend them-
selves to externally orientated strategies. Thus,
decision-making processes may be influenced
by changes in communication technologies as
well as, ultimately, the character and outcome
of activist movements.
The practices of feminist activism are cur-
rently changing as we incorporate another set
of technosocial conventions called—for ease—
ICT. The deployment of new communications
technologies is facilitating the involvement of a
new, and wider, set of actors within feminist
politics. It is changing the pacing of feminist
political action, and is, simultaneously, both ex-
panding and contracting the geographic spaces
in which “feminist activism” is carried out.
Moreover, it is leading to a new emphasis on
the production and dissemination of informa-
tion . . . which some feminists consider to be at
the cost of more bodied forms of activity.
Practices are also changing, however, for
other—antifeminist—social actors. Informa-
tion is being commodified in an unprecedented
manner, while a new distribution of technoso-
cial capacities is allowing new and/or intensi-
fied forms of social, cultural, and economic
domination to develop. As the “information
society” becomes more firmly established as a
technosocial network during the next few de-
cades, gender relations will surely be reconfig-
ured in complex and unpredictable ways.
The new communications technologies are
providing us with both a pressing need for, and
the means to create, a feminist movement with
a new character—transnational, diverse, practi-
cal, and living with ongoing tensions in regards
to beliefs, identities, and policies. Moreover,
they are facilitating the global restructuring of
socio-economic power, which increases the
stakes for this emerging transnational feminist
project. How will feminists, in the information
age, enter the relatively private spaces in which
elites make decisions, and influence them in
that process?
If feminist activists are to mount an effec-
tive challenge to the more destructive aspects
of globalisation, we must address several key
questions regarding the material structuring of
power in relation to “information.” Who con-
trols this information? How is it being used?
How can we get equal access to the means of
its production and dissemination? What does a
feminist style of “information work” look like?
What means do we have to reshape the infor-
mation and communication technologies? How
do we translate better information into social
justice and social change? We need to draw on
a sophisticated reflexivity, a certain cynicism,
and a great deal of creativity; being “well in-
formed” is not enough.
ENDNOTES
1. Like Anjona Roy (1995, p. 101), I take the word “activ-
ism” to mean personal or collective mobilisation for
change. However, my focus in this article will be on col-
lective mobilisations.
2. A point that emerges strongly, if implicitly, in many
accounts of particular activist movements. See, for
example, Kaplan on the “Jane” abortion movement in
pre-1973 USA (1998), Brú-Bistuer’s discussion of three
antiindustrial waste movements in Spain (Brú-Bistuer,
1996), and Power’s account of Dublin’s LOT organisa-
tion (Power, 1995).
3. WomenWatch is the UN gateway for the empower-
ment of women; it has been coordinating the Beijing
5 review process. See its website: http://www.un.org/
womenwatch/index.html. WomenAction was established
in March 1999 as an informal alliance of women’s infor-
mation networks and advocacy organisations from
around the world. Its mission is to actively engage in
the Beijing review process, with a special focus on
women and communications. It set up a number of
working groups, and associated email discussion lists,
to review implementation of specific aspects of the
Beijing resolutions.
4. Women Connect is the first UK-based informatics ini-
 Feminist Activism in the Information Age
tiative catering specifically for women’s organisations.
In its first phase, its 20 members included women’s ref-
uges, women’s centres, an older women’s project,
health information advice centres, and a national
women’s network. Five of its women’s centres catered
mainly for women in ethnic minority communities; oth-
ers had projects catering for lesbians, younger women,
and women with disabilities. See the project website:
www.womenconnect.org.uk for a full description of
working methods and project outcomes.
5. Two of these workshops were held at Women Con-
nect’s final conference: From Social Exclusion to Social
Change on the Information Superhighway: Women
Connect at CDF, held in Nov. 1999 at the DTI (Dept.
of Trade and Industry) in London; see the conference
report on Women Connect’s website. The third work-
shop was held at a regional conference I co-organised
in Bradford, also in Nov. 1999: Online for Change?
Community Activism and IT in the Information Age
(University of Bradford and Bradford Resource Cen-
tre, in association with POPTEL).
6. Emma Martin, for example, was among the foremost
Owenite speakers on securalism, socialism, women’s
issues, marriage/divorce reform, science, and free love
(Scott, 1996, pp. 64–65; Taylor, 1983). A superb
speaker, she regularly drew crowds of over a thou-
sand—sometimes swelling to 5,000 when marriage and
divorce were discussed, amid “. . . an atmosphere of
feverish excitement” (The Movement, 1844). Martin
lived frugally on a small stipend provided by the Owen-
ite movement, travelling with her three young daugh-
ters via the uncomfortable means then available, and
speaking in noisy, suffocatingly crowded, lecture halls
(Taylor, 1983, pp. 140–141). Heckling, violence, and
even full-scale riots erupted at many of her lectures.
Clergymen urged their parishioners to attack her; “. . .
on several occasions Emma was jeered and chased by
crowds, while in Edinburgh in 1845 she and her little
daughter escaped serious injury at the hands of a mob
which began stoning them” (Taylor, 1983, pp. 153–154).
7. For example, Jessie Boucherett—a young member of
the gentry—saw a copy of the new Englishwoman’s
Review on a railway stall and went down to London to
meet its editors. She later joined the Langham Place
group, set up a campaigning organisation for women’s
employment, presented a petition on women’s suffrage
to Parliament, and established a remedial school in
accounting for women (Lacey, 1987).
8. My use of this term follows Beverley Skeggs’ (1997)
modification of Bourdieu’s approach (Bourdieu, 1986).
9. Women Connect was one outcome—inspired, in part,
by Margaret Page’s recognition of the power of ICT in
Beijing (Page, 1997; Page & Scott, 1999a). A feminist
campaign pushed gender issues to the top of the
agenda at a 1997 World Bank sponsored conference on
information technology in Canada (Huyer, 1999). A
group called “Women living Under Muslim Law” have
created a women’s e-mail network in the Arab world
(Alshejni, 1999; Gittler, 1999), which uses closed lists to
create safe spaces for discussion of issues relating to
sexuality, violence, and the body (Harcourt, 1999b).
ALAI—the Latin American Information Agency—
extended the women’s electronic networks it devel-
oped during the Beijing conference to create electronic
spaces with other women’s organisations for dissemi-
nating information relating to campaigns regarding vio-
419
lence against women (Burch, 1999).
10. Ketiti’s quote in full: “Les difficultés qu’elles affrontent
réside en realité dans la situation inconfortable dans
laquelle elles se trouvent. D’abord le fait qu’elles
soient une ‘élite de genre’ minoritaire dans le monde
de la technologie rend plus difficile leurs tentatives de
s’imposer ou de changer les pratiques dominantes dans
ce monde-lá.” The need to address this issue has also
greatly influenced the design of the Women Connect
project (Page & Scott, 1999a).
11. This argument is problematic, not least, because—with
the development of firewalls and other security mea-
sures to protect elites while ordinary people are subject
to new, invasive, surveillance technologies (Bowden &
Adkeniz, 1999; Davies & Hosein, 1999)—geographies
of public and private are now being redrawn in cyber-
space . . . with “privacy” the prerogative of the power-
ful. As Nancy Duncan has noted, there are different
kinds of “public” space, and some have a great deal
more influence than others (Duncan, 1996, p, 130).
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