home Article

Roundtable: Internet and the women’s movement

September 20th, 2013 | Events, News

The next AWARE Roundtable is on Wednesday, 23 October, on how internet technologies have affected the women’s movement in Singapore.

The identities of women’s movements across the globe are shaped by the institutional contexts they are embedded in. Singapore is a compelling case study because the different phases of the women’s movement reflect sharp influences of a rapidly changing political economy. The significance of the women’s movement lies not only in its accomplishments, but also in how it negotiates a hostile terrain moulded by socio-cultural constraints and the state.

The arrival of the Internet has presented new opportunities for challengers of the state. Besides creating new modalities of collective action and facilitating traditional ones, blogs, electronic forums, and social networking sites have given collective action an extra boost by connecting like-minded individuals at unprecedented speed. Across the globe, women are responding to new opportunities for informal resistance by using digital technologies to form groups.

This discussion examines how (and if) the Internet has opened up spaces of contestation for women and for which segments of the population. We will also talk about the ways in which Internet technologies are used by emerging groups and the constraints posed by these technologies.

feminist_on_the_internet

 

Event Details

Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Time: 7:30pm
Location: AWARE Centre

Click here to register.

 

About the Speaker:

Carol Soon’s work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and her paper on blogging and collective action was selected as one of the best papers at the recent Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government. Her research interests include digital engagement, online communities, and how individuals and organisations use digital technologies to engender change.

Carol has taught courses at the Department of Communications and New Media, and the University Scholars Programme in NUS, and received several awards for her teaching. In 2012, Carol was Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, with support from the Australian Endeavour Award.