subject: Reversing The Effects Of Male Media Domination [print this page] For the most part the proliferation of the Internet has brought with it positive social change, but it hasn't been without negatives. One of the most significant is the effect on society of the predominantly male attitude of the technology industry, which until recently has influenced the dynamic of the net. In recent years women's voices have surged in the internet, and in the entertainment sphere there are more girl games online than before. But the male attitude has still left a mark.
Back in the days when the technology that made the Internet possible was being put in place, the technology industry was almost entirely male. In the laboratories of the early leaders in computer technology the only women present were probably answering phones. The brainpower that laid the track for technological advancement had a decidedly male bias.
E-commerce dominates the Internet today, but in the early days there weren't the tools available to enable people to buy things over the net. Then, the primary purposes of the Internet were communication, entertainment, and promotion. The communication business, the entertainment business, and the advertising industry were also overwhelmingly dominated by men at that time, so the male perspective made an indelible mark when the Internet was just getting started.
It's no wonder, then, that the primary representations of women on the Internet were more like the projections of male sexual fantasies than they were reflections of what women really are. Online pornography grew rapidly. The gaming industry's representation of women wasn't much of an improvement, with real women re-imagined as fantastical caricatures.
In some ways that has had a major impact on how younger generations perceive women. Girls today are responding to a media influence that increasingly casts them as sex objects, and they are responding by emulating the behavior they've been shown. Boys have a natural inclination to see girls primarily in sexual terms, and without mitigating influences they are increasingly seeing little else. That erodes the position that women hold in society.
Unfortunately, the ideal of woman that evolved over the series of generations who fought so bravely to change society and to attain a level of liberation and equality has largely been lost. Today, girls expect opportunity to be handed to them, but they don't take it upon themselves to earn it. And the Internet, which has had such a profoundly positive role as a democratizing influence in some of the world's most oppressive societies is putting women back into the objectified bondage they fought for a century to escape.
Young women have to take up the mantle and stand with the same strength possessed by women of previous generations, or they will lose their liberated state. Young female leaders need to emerge; they need to be fearless with their voices. If there are enough voices crying, the wilderness has to listen.
Young women in the arts are making their voices heard. More female commentators are appearing online every day. The girl games online may seem trivial, but they are emblematic of a balancing of gender representations. These changes are flames that need to be fanned with attention and with active support, or else the position of women in our society may continue to decline.
