Women and the Spatial Politics of Community Networks: Invisible in the sociotechnical imaginary of wireless connectivity

Proceedings of the 31st Australian Conference on Human-Computer-Interaction Pub Date : 2019-12-02 DOI:10.1145/3369457.3369474

N. Bidwell

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引用次数: 12

Abstract

Community Networks (CNs) offer many positive impacts for rural inhabitants of low-income regions beyond cheap communications, including different benefits to local economies, social welfare and personal well-being. However, spatial politics compromise diverse inclusion in these benefits by rendering women invisible when the wireless technologies used by CNs are designed, deployed and referred to in discussions about regulation. I support this claim by drawing together insights from multiple case research of rural CNs in India, Indonesia, Argentina Mexico, South Africa and Uganda, and my engagement with activists advocating for CNs. The spatial politics shaping debates about spectrum regulation, and the wireless technologies to which they apply, are at different scales than women in rural villages experience. Gendered spatial politics perform orthogonally across all scales and dimensions to constrain women's proximal access to WiFi, capacity to learn about and undertake technical tasks and involvement in decisions about CNs; however, advocacy for CNs works across vast geographies.

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妇女与社区网络的空间政治:在无线连接的社会技术想象中看不见

社区网络(CNs)为低收入地区的农村居民提供了许多除了廉价通信之外的积极影响，包括对当地经济、社会福利和个人福祉的不同好处。然而，在设计、部署和讨论监管时，空间政治使女性不可见，从而损害了这些利益的多样性。我通过对印度、印度尼西亚、阿根廷、墨西哥、南非和乌干达的农村网络的多个案例研究，以及我与倡导网络的活动人士的接触，来支持这一说法。空间政治影响了关于频谱监管的辩论，以及它们所应用的无线技术，其规模与农村妇女的经历不同。性别空间政治在所有尺度和维度上都是正交的，以限制女性对WiFi的近端访问、学习和承担技术任务的能力以及参与有关中枢神经网络的决策;然而，对cnn的支持跨越了广阔的地域。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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Proceedings of the 31st Australian Conference on Human-Computer-Interaction

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