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 "There's quite a bit of talk about the lack of women in the 'hard' sciences, as if our success in the 'creative' sciences still isn't enough. Does this make creative work 'soft'? Is hard good/soft bad? If something is soft, is it feminine? And just why are we still buying into this 'hard/soft' metaphor, anyway?" -- Jennifer Ley |
A Letter from the Editor
If there is one thing the net constantly brings home to me, it is how wide our world has become, how many groups and schools of thought and form it encompasses. The net makes it easy to reach past one's own theories and mode of execution towards another, something I hope you'll find reflected in the variety of works presented on these 'pages'. Our digital environment has placed the very concept of literature on a cusp -- last year's women's issue, co-operatively produced with CK Tower's Conspire, featured, for the most part, what I've come to call classic text work. The fact that it now seems necessary to indicate that some work is primarily text-based, linear, and resides on one 'page' reflects just how much the technology the net offers us is changing the face of what we call literature. I also think the net is changing the dynamics of feminism. There are so many women working in digital media we could not hope to include them all in Women and Technology, and this too is a measure of women's success on the net. The fear that participating in an issue devoted to work by women, often voiced when putting together projects like this one, did not arise once. It seems our fear of being 'ghettoized' is fading; our gender is but one facet of our humanity. Or as Carolyn Guyer says, in her essay Along the Estuary: "The great cultural question of our time is how to accommodate our growing recognition of multiplicity." (1) We still have a long way to go. I regret that more work by women who don't speak English as a first language is lacking in these pages. I did not poll our contributors on their racial background, but I am quite sure that work by white women predominates here, and that saddens me, as it seems that abolishing race barriers on the net should be relatively easy. I'm also troubled by certain stereotypes. There's quite a bit of talk about the lack of women in the 'hard' sciences, as if our success in the 'creative' sciences still isn't enough. Does this make creative work 'soft'? Is hard good/soft bad? If something is soft, is it feminine? And just why are we still buying into this 'hard/soft' metaphor, anyway? On the other hand, if we choose not to talk about our biology because it might damn us to its fabled restrictions, doesn't this rob us of proclaiming and utilizing its assets? The issues that confront women were a long time in the making. There is no easy fix, no fast track to change. Witness the latest news that two women in the past six months have filed sexual harassment suits against a major online company. As pointed out by Diane Greco in our roundtable discussion, the real issue for women is not technology, but power, and in an environment filled to the gills with venture capital, fast profits, and the kind of life styles quick success can bring, perhaps we shouldn't find it surprising that male/female power/dominance games are still being played the way they always were before the digital 'revolution'. Perhaps we'd be better off thinking in terms of 'evolution'? All the more reason, I think, to celebrate all the things that women do well, and how well they can do them together. Riding the Meridian: Women and Technology is, I think, a testament to that. -- Jennifer Ley, Editor
1. Carolyn Guyer "Along the Estuary" Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse Graywolf Forum I, Sept. 96
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