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This is the postprint version of: Lim, S. S. (2014). Women, ‘double work’ and mobile media: The more things change, the more they stay the
same. In G. Goggin & L. Hjorth (Eds.) Routledge Companion to Mobile Media (pp. 356-364). London: Routledge.
Women, ‘double work’ and mobile media:
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Sun Sun Lim
Introduction
Lying at the intersections of disciplines such as of gender studies, media and communications,
social psychology, sociology, anthropology and science, technology and society, women’s
engagement with mobile media has been the subject of provocative and innovative research that
have provided as much insight as they have inspired points of reflection. Encouragingly, there
has been significant growth in the diversity of subjects studied over time, from nuclear families
to single parent households, from working adults to the elderly, as well as a widening range of
issues being investigated, including household coordination, family relationships, romantic
partnerships and workplace (dis)empowerment.
Research on women’s use of mobile media has also been largely ordered by their spheres
of existence, namely the home and the workplace, while capturing the rapidly blurring
boundaries between these closely intertwined milieu. Felicitously, even though research on
mobile media use by women has been understandably dominated by regions where ICT
penetration is higher and access more forthcoming, the research landscape has evolved along
with the rapid diffusion of mobile media. Mobile phones in particular, are manufactured for and
marketed to consumers across all socio-economic sectors, making mobile phone ownership
commonplace in both developed and developing countries. Findings are thus emerging from
Asia and the Global South, focusing on hitherto understudied groups such as migrant women
workers and transnational families. Such studies lend depth and diversity to our understanding of
the role of mobile media in women’s performance of domestic duties, focusing as they do on
families which defy conventional classification, whose members are not physically proximate,
and whose ‘away’ and ‘left-behind’ members encounter vastly contrasting levels and quality of
mobile media access.
And yet, as this chapter seeks to elucidate, even as the technological landscape of mobile
media changes with the constant appearance of disruptive technologies such as the recent tablet
phenomenon, the social settings within which women appropriate mobile media remain
fundamentally unaltered. The socio-cultural norms and expectations surrounding women’s roles
in society, as daughters, spouses, mothers and individuals in their own right, are as
circumscribing as they are circumscribed, as can be witnessed in women’s use of mobile media
as they strive to fulfil both familial and professional obligations. As Leopoldina Fortunati
astutely observed, women are more vulnerable than men to the pressure of “double work” - the
challenges of balancing obligations in both the home and the workplace
1
.
Taking women’s navigation of this “double work” environment as the departure point,
this chapter will review how women’s use of mobile media in the home and the workplace has
evolved over the years, while remaining unchanged in particular respects. In so doing, it will
incorporate studies from a range of geographical regions, both developed and developing, thus
capturing the varying social norms which can impinge on women’s engagement with mobile
media. Issues surrounding the duality of mobile media, simultaneously limiting and enabling,
and the shifting, yet persistent, liminalities that women negotiate will also be discussed. The
chapter then concludes with a call for urgent imperatives to be met in research on women’s use
of mobile media.
Home
“It must be remembered, however, that cellular telephones are not available to all
economic strata of society, nor are they likely to be.” Lana Rakow and Vija Navarro
2
While access to mobile media devices has improved dramatically for all sectors of society from
the early 1990s, when Lana Rakow and Vija Navarro completed their pioneering study of
women’s use of cellular telephones in cars
3
, the ways in which mobile media are incorporated
into the domestic lives of women has not departed that dramatically from their original findings.
Whereas Rakow and Navarro found that women actively used car phones for the micro-
coordination of family schedules and general household management, study after study has since
found that women use the mobile phone and other mobile media for the same because they
continue to bear the brunt of these duties
4
. Indeed, Rakow and Navarro were prescient in
identifying the phenomenon of ‘remote mothering’, a term that is becoming increasingly loaded
as mobile media become more ubiquitous and multi-functional.
Rakow and Navarro’s work also struck an early note of ambivalence, arguing that even as
women appreciated the benefits of the cellular phone, it also served to heighten their sense of
responsibility, establishing an inextricable link to home life that could be burdensome. The
women they interviewed were not too enthused about owning a mobile phone and saw it as more
of an instrumental tool for enhancing their personal safety and their availability to their children.
These reservations were echoed in Sun Sun Lim and Carol Soon’s study of middle-class families
in China and Korea which discovered that mothers are unnerved by the constant connectivity
binding them and their children because mobile communication facilitated “perpetual contact
[that] translated into a state of perpetual concern for their children’s well-being”
5
. Robyn
Longhurst’s study of mothers who keep in touch with their children via Skype demonstrates yet
another facet of mediated mothering, where mothers use real-time video to gauge the wellbeing
of children who are away from home, thus extending the boundaries of maternal care
6
.
Most recently, in Lynn Schofield Clark’s The Parent App, she notes that even as
smartphones and their slew of apps are increasingly indispensable in helping parents coordinate
the family’s daily whirr of activities, these gadgets are yet another imposition on parents,
necessitating the constant updating and synchronisation of schedules among all family
members
7
. Hence, while innovations in mobile media have helped women execute their
mothering duties more efficiently and effectively, research suggests that this heightened
connectivity serves to exacerbate rather than alleviate their mothering burden, further ossifying
women’s position in the home as “Mom-in-Chief”
8
.
The same can be said for transnational mothers even though the distance separating them
and their families makes it impractical and impracticable for them to be actively embedded in
family life. Yet, research clearly demonstrates that these women have strategically and
ingeniously deployed a wide range of media to be active mothers even though they are
physically absent from home. They, too, avidly use mobile media to fulfil micro-coordination
and household management duties in creative ways that suit their unique and complicated
personal circumstances. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila’s early study of El
Salvadorian transnational mothers working in the US in the 1990s found that the mothers used
phone calls and letters to express their care and concern, reminding their children to take their
vitamins and to eat regular meals
9
. Academic investigation of migrant women workers has
flourished further since, reflecting an intensification in these women’s use of mobile media as
mobile phones and associated services have become more affordable over time.
10
Cecilia Uy-Tioco’s study of Filipinas working in the US provided insights into how these
women wielded considerable authority over their left-behind children, using calls and text
messages to decide on matters large and small, from managing finances to granting permission to
drive the family car
11
. Similarly, Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller note that Filipino nurses and
domestic workers based in the UK engage in “intensive mothering” through mobile and online
communications, involving themselves in “everyday parenting and micromanaging of their
children’s meals, homework and disciplinary issues”
12
. As Uy-Tioco observes therefore, while
these migrant mothers may have been “masculinised” by their overseas employment and
elevated to the position of economic provider, the connectivity facilitated by phone calls and text
messages continues to relegate them to their traditional mothering roles
13
.
Beyond more instrumental uses of mobile media, extensive research has also been
conducted on women’s use of mobile media for kin keeping—the nurturance of emotional ties
with their significant others. Larissa Hjorth and Sun Sun Lim note that mobile media have a
palpable affective dimension for women, who actively used them to foster feelings of intimacy
with friends and family so as to forge strong(er) relationship bonds.
14
Extant research supports
this observation, with findings from various countries demonstrating that mobile phone calls tend
to be made for social and interpersonal purposes and for managing the family, rather than for
extending work commitments
15
. Notably, based on a large scale survey of Australian mobile
phone users’ habits, Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman and Judith Brown argue that the mobile
phone bolsters people’s ability to express feelings of intimacy and to nourish relationships
through brief but perpetual and intermittent contact. In particular, they found that women were
more likely to recognise value in maintaining ties with relatives, thus resonating with prior
literature that argues that kin-keeping tasks are fundamentally borne by women
16
. Qualitative
research has fleshed out how women appropriate mobile communications for kin-keeping and
relationship management. Notably, Jo Tacchi, Kathi Kitner and Kate Crawford probed into the
“meaningful mobility” of rural women in India and revealed a concerted effort by women in this
patrilineal society to maintain ties with mothers and daughters from whom they lived apart after
marriage
17
. These women made use of their husbands’ mobile phones when the latter returned
home in the evenings, thereby benefiting from the lower call rates to make what they considered
to be essential connections to their loved ones.
Studies focusing on migrant mothers have also noted how these transnational women
reinforce their love for their families through mobile media, so as to maintain their presence at
home despite the geographical distance. Indeed, Deirdre McKay notes that in the process of
sustaining bonds of intimacy with their loved ones back home, migrants acquire ‘new emotional
grammars’ that are reflected in the communication practices they adopt in their newfound
circumstances, including phoning home whenever they are overwhelmed by homesickness,
remitting money home and servicing bank loans of left-behind family members as a
demonstration of their love.
18
Notably though, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas discovered that unlike
migrant mothers, migrant fathers seem content with maintaining merely instrumental
communication with their families, thus underlining observations that kin-keeping remains a
gendered task
19
.
As well, in particular cultural settings, kin-keeping is slightly more textured in light of
prevailing socio-cultural norms. Lim’s study of Chinese and Korean families’ media use found
that the role- and rule-bound communication in those societies saw mothers using mobile
communications in particularly strategic ways
20
. For example, after an altercation between father
and child, one mother urged her husband to apologise to their child via text messaging so that his
position of authority remained undiminished, while his ‘loss of face’ was avoided. She was thus
able to maintain family harmony while helping to cement her husband’s position as head of the
household. Other women in the study also found their communication options with their loved
ones increased and enhanced as matters that were too awkward to broach in person now found
their voice in faceless text messages. Although research on kin-keeping via ICTs and mobile
media has clearly flourished, it has primarily centred around women between their 20s and 40s
who are in the prime of working adulthood and the throes of active parenthood.
A notable exception is Heather Horst’s study of Jamaican transnational grandmothers
who, after their overseas stints, had mixed feelings about returning to more traditional gender
roles back home. But these women assuaged such feelings of residual resentment by using
mobile phone plans and cards for kin-keeping with family members who were overseas, thereby
actualising themselves to an extent
21
. More recently, Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow’s study of
Canadian grandmothers showed how these women seek to overcome the challenges of
generational differences and technological advancements to actively participate in family life
22
.
Their desire to bond with their grandchildren motivates them to adopt otherwise alien and
discomfiting practices such as text messaging, thus drawing them into a circle of mediated
family intimacy from which they would otherwise be excluded.
Besides matters of micro-coordination and relationship management, the enlarged
presence of mobile media in the domestic space has yet another significant implication for
women. Given their greater involvement in home life, women necessarily bear a heftier load in
the supervision of children’s media use
23
. In this regard, a burgeoning body of work has emerged
to question how mobile media presents new issues for parental oversight. Societal expectations
around good parenting increasingly dictate that parents should be more engaged in the lives of
their children, including managing their access to ICTs and mobile media
24
. In particular, the
risk/safety debate tends to underscore parental perceptions of children’s need for personal mobile
phones
25
. This is especially discernible in Japan, where Misa Matsuda’s investigation into
mothers of elementary school children reveals that concerns about children’s safety elide with
notions of maternal responsibility, thus engendering a climate where giving children their own
mobile phones is a must
26
. Again this example vividly highlights the point that as more
electronic devices encroach into the home, the list of duties associated with mothering grows in
length and difficulty.
Furthermore, managing children’s access to mobile media seems but a trifling aspect of
parental supervision when compared to the task of monitoring children’s actual usage of these
devices. In particular, the portability and personally-owned nature of mobile media devices add
complexity to parental mediation because children can use these devices on the go, without being
confined to a fixed location in which adults can impose supervision fairly predictably and
reliably
27
. With personal device ownership, children’s online communications are less
transparent to parents because they have more opportunities to engage in unsupervised peer
interaction, yet are paradoxically more transparent in view of the digital communication trail that
can be revisited and scrutinised. In Lim and Soon’s study of Korean middle-class families, half
the mothers admitted to secretly viewing their children’s mobile phone text messages so as to
better understand their children, but their children eventually realised and resented this
28
. When
monitoring their children’s use of mobile media, mothers have to therefore tread the fine line
between supervision and surveillance and beware of their concern translating into conflict. On
this point, Clark cautions that parents should refrain from surveillance and over-involvement in
their children’s digital communications, and give their children the autonomy to make their own
decisions and acquire life experience
29
. In sum, as mobile media use starts to pervade the
everyday lives of families and introduce unprecedented scenarios for parental oversight, women
who already shoulder the bulk of parenting duties have the added responsibility of coping with
such intractable issues.
Work
“…the fact that labour now escapes spatial and temporal measure poses obvious problems
for defining work limits.” Melissa Gregg
30
While women’s domestic responsibilities have been intensively studied, considerable attention
has also been paid to working women’s use of ICTs to manage work-life balance, without a
correspondingly fervent interest in similar issues for men. This apparent asymmetry can be
attributed to the acknowledgement that women bear a greater domestic burden that is not equally
shared with their male counterparts. As Noelle Chesley evinced through her study exploring the
relationship between information technology use, distress and family satisfaction, both men and
women experienced the negative implications of work demands spilling into family life, but only
women experienced the adverse impact of family demands spilling into work life
31
. Indeed,
Gregg used the term “presence bleed”
32
to capture how women feel compelled to reconcile their
involvement in these overlapping spheres.
Concerns about the growing pressure from managing both personal commitments and
workplace obligations would intensify as ICTs began to be more actively deployed in the
proverbial “new economy” of the late 1990s and early 2000s
33
. At the same time, there was also
optimism that ICTs would help to correct gender inequalities in the labour market because
women could potentially earn higher salaries, enjoy more flexible hours and venture into
independent self-employment
34
. As mobile media began to saturate the workplace from around
the mid-2000s, delivering a further shot in the arm for this new economy, the same concerns
about work-life balance would arise, again answered by hopes of rectifying gender imbalances in
the workplace. The advent of versatile, multi-functional smartphones and portable yet powerful
tablets have further amplified these views, creating perspectival divides on benefits and ills of
being “always on”
35
.
Recent research indicates that women’s strategic appropriation of mobile media and
being “always on” has been both empowering and encumbering. They feel simultaneously
liberated by the enhanced connectivity, while burdened by the heightened, persistent familial
responsibilities that such connectivity sustains. A recent study of Canadian mothers’ use of
smartphone apps by Julie Frizzo-Barker and Peter Chow-White finds these women exploiting an
extensive range of the phone’s affordances to manage their multiple obligations, including using
an app to shut down Internet access so as to minimise distractions, Skype to send text messages
and Dropbox for sharing files with co-workers
36
. While energised by and appreciative of the
smartphone’s many conveniences, these women were also at pains to moderate the pressures that
the phone’s relentless connectivity brought them, strategically managing their availability to their
employers and significant others.
Similarly, Rachel Crowe and Catherine Middleton’s studied female professionals’ use of
the Blackberry to gain insights into how these middle to upper middle class women calibrate
their smartphone use
37
. The younger women in their sample assiduously convey an image of
responsiveness and dependability to their colleagues and superiors by responding promptly to
emails and texts, with some sustaining this “habit of responsibility” even when on vacation. For
them, being available, even at the cost of disruptions to family life is seen as a given, and as
small sacrifices which their families should accept. In contrast, the older women who are also
more established in their careers can afford to be more particular about restricting their
availability to their colleagues, and guard their private time more jealously. The contrasts
between the younger and older women raise serious questions about the “cohort effect” – when
these younger professionals attain seniority, will they continue to sustain this level of unbridled
availability and will such practices intensify as mobile media become even more deeply
incorporated into the workplace? Will their expectations percolate to their even younger
subordinates, making the culture of being ‘always-on’ more entrenched? Such questions need to
be pondered as the climate of work-life balance seems to be giving way to one of work-life
merge.
These tensions between empowerment and encumbrance via mobile media are more
pronounced and also more nuanced for transnational women. Heather Horst observed that
improved communication opportunities enabled Jamaicans who worked abroad to be more
sensitive to and well-informed about the grim realities of overseas employment. As well, some
found the pressure of providing support to family members oppressive and managed such
obligations by using caller ID to screen calls from particular individuals
38
. Similarly, Minu
Thomas and Sun Sun Lim’s study of Filipino and Indian female migrant domestic workers in
Singapore found that despite the isolation these women experience as live-in help, unlike those
working in factories who enjoy the company of co-workers, mobile phones ease their solitude by
provide them with a link to their families. However, being constantly connected to family meant
being drawn into everyday affairs and family emergencies which these women found to be
emotionally draining
39
. Madianou and Miller also point to the equivocal position that migrant
women occupy as they struggle to reconcile their love for their left-behind kin, with the esteem
and value they derive from their overseas employment
40
. The constant communication afforded
by mobile and online communications facilitates a more active involvement in family life that
helps them to cope with these feelings of ambivalence and in some cases, gives them the
confidence to prolong their migration. Despite the distinguishing characteristics of this recent
swathe of research, it is notable that the dual pressures of family and work that confront women
resonate with those of earlier studies.
Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, women across all socio economic sectors are appropriating mobile
media with growing intensity, motivated by a confluence of socio-cultural expectations, peer
norms and institutional factors. While not necessarily exacerbating the double work
phenomenon, mobile media has hardly contributed to its alleviation. The thread of double work
has dominated much of the research on women and mobile media and has even persisted and
amplified over time. There is no escaping the richness of empirical evidence from diverse
countries that articulates the emic voice of women, capturing the multitude of stresses they have
to negotiate via their appropriation of mobile media as they fulfil their double duties, in both
proximate and transnational settings. However, it behoves us to ask how the design of mobile
media can be more sensitive to and empathetic of women in these different situations, so that
they can benefit from a greater sense of agency and control as they incorporate mobile media
into their management of work and family. How can children’s media devices be refined to
lighten the load of maternal mediation and supervision? How can mobile phones be further
developed to enable erecting boundaries between one’s personal and professional time? What
innovations in mobile media can we create to mitigate the task of kin-keeping and relationship
management?
Unfortunately, in the design and marketing of technology products, women are typically
scripted to be more preoccupied with the appearance rather than the functions of technological
products, thereby undermining rather than bolstering women’s domestication of technology
41
.
Disturbingly, women have themselves become unwitting accomplices where even those involved
in the technology industry have been known to adopt a gender- and class-biased script in
designing technology for other women
42
. To put a brake to this self-perpetuating cycle that
would otherwise determine that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, we need
to heed the call to shift our research energies away from consumption
43
to more aggressively
investigate the links between gender relations and design and infocomm policy, and put the
needs of women at the forefront of design imperatives
44
. Failing which, as mobile media
becomes ever more potent and ubiquitous, the opportunity for women to be empowered with and
through their adoption of mobile media will be ripe, yet unmaximized.
Notes
1
Leopoldina Fortunati, “Gender and the mobile phone, “ in Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth, eds., Mobile
Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media (New York: Routledge, 2009), 23-36.
2
Lana Rakow and Vija Navarro, “Remote mothering and the parallel shift: women meet the cellular telephone,”
Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10(2), 1993: 155.
3
Lana Rakow and Vija Navarro, “Remote mothering and the parallel shift: women meet the cellular telephone,”
Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10(2), 1993: 144-157.
4
Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman and Judith E. Brown, “Families without borders: mobile phones, connectedness
and work–home divisions,” Sociology 42(4), 2008: 635-652.; Valerie A. J. Frissen, “ICTs in the rush hour of life,” The
Information Society: An International Journal 16(1), 2000: 6-75.; Rich Ling, The Mobile Connection: The Cell
Phone’s Impact on Society (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004); Rich Ling and Leslie Haddon, “Mobile telephony, mobility
and the coordination of everyday life, “ in James Katz, ed., Machines that Become Us: The Social
Context of Personal Communication Technology (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003), 245-266.
5
Sun Sun Lim and Carol Soon, “The influence of social and cultural factors on mothers' domestication of household
ICTs - experiences of Chinese and Korean women,” Telematics and Informatics 27 (3), 2010: 205-216.
6
Longhurst, Robyn, "Using Skype to Mother: Bodies, Emotions, Visuality, and Screens," Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space 31(4 ), 2013: 664-79.
7
Lynn Schofield Clark, The Parent App: Understanding Families In The Digital Age (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
8
This term was famously used by Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States, in a speech she made during
President Barack Obama’s campaign for a second presidential term in September 2012. She used “Mom-in-Chief”
to describe her position in her household as primary caregiver to their children, as opposed to President Barack
Obama’s role as Commander-in-Chief of the United State Armed Forces. Her use of the term was widely criticized
by feminists for limiting women’s role in society to that of managing the domestic realm. See Amanda Marcotte,
“On Mom-in-Chief” The American Prospect, September 6, 2012. Accessed January 26, 2013.
http://prospect.org/article/mom-chief.
9
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila, “I’m here, but I’m there: The meanings of Latina transnational
motherhood,” Gender & Society 11(5), 1997: 548-571.
10
Steven Vertovec, “Cheap calls: The social glue of migrant transnationalism,” Global Networks 4(2): 2004: 219–
224.
11
Cecila Uy-Tioco, “Overseas Filipino workers and text messaging: Reinventing transnational mothering,”
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 21(2), 2007: 253-265.
12
Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller, “Mobile phone parenting: Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina
migrant mothers and their left-behind children,” New Media & Society 13(3), 2011: 457-470.
13
Cecila Uy-Tioco, “Overseas Filipino workers and text messaging: Reinventing transnational mothering,”
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 21(2), 2007: 253-265.
14
Larissa Hjorth and Sun Sun Lim, “Women and mobile intimacy in an age of social media and affective
technology,” Feminist Media Studies 12(4), 2012: 477-484.
15
'Judy Wajcman, Michael Bittman and Jude Brown, “Families without borders: mobile phones, connectedness and
work-home divisions,” Sociology 42(4),2008: 635-652.; Dafna Lemish and Akiba A. Cohen, “On the gendered nature
of mobile phone culture in Israel, “Sex Roles 52(7/8), 2005: 511-521.
16
Ann Moyal, “The gendered use of the telephone: an Australian case study, “ Media, Culture & Society 14(1),
1992: 51–72.; Lana Rakow, Gender on the Line. Women, the Telephone, and Community Life (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1992).
17
Jo Tacchi, Kathi R. Kitner and Kate Crawford, “Meaningful mobility: Gender, development and mobile phones, “
Feminist Media Studies 12(4), 528-537.
18
McKay, Deirdre, “’Sending Dollars Shows Feeling’ – Emotions and Economies in Filipino Migration." Mobilities
2(2), 2007: 175-94.
19
Rhacel Salazar Parrenas , “Long distance intimacy: Class, gender and intergenerational relations between
mothers and children in Filipino transnational families, “ Global Networks 5(4), 2005: 317–336.
20
Sun Sun Lim, “Technology domestication in the Asian homestead: comparing the experiences of middle class
families in China and South Korea,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 2 (2), 2008: 189-209
21
Horst, Heather A., "Grandmothers, Girlfriends and Big Men: The Gendered Geographies of Jamaican
Transnational Communication." In Leopoldina Fortunati, Raul Pertierra and Jane Vincent, eds., Migration, Diaspora
and Information Technology in Global Societies (New York: Routledge, 2011), 65-76.
22
Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “’I’m G-mom on the phone: Remote grandmothering, cell phones and inter-
generational dis/connections, “ Feminist Media Studies 12(4), 496-505.
23
See for example Shingo Dobashi, “The gendered use of keitai in domestic contexts,” in Mizuko Ito, Daisuke
Okabe and Misa Matsuda, eds., Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life (Cambridge, MA:
MIT, 2006), 219-236.
24
Nicola Green and Leslie Haddon, Mobile Communications: An Introduction to New Media (Oxford: Berg, 2009)
25
Rich Ling and Birgitte Yttri, "Hyper-coordination via mobile phones in Norway, " in James Katz and Mark Aakhus,
eds., Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
26
Misa Matsuda, “Children with Keitai : When Mobile Phones Change from “Unnecessary” to “Necessary”, “ East
Asian Science, Technology & Society 2(2), 2008: 167-188.
27
Hee Jhee Jiow and Sun Sun Lim, “ The evolution of video games and growing challenges for parental mediation, “
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32(6), 2012: 452 – 459.
28
Sun Sun Lim and Carol Soon, “The influence of social and cultural factors on mothers' domestication of
household ICTs - experiences of Chinese and Korean women,” Telematics and Informatics 27 (3), 2010: 205-216.
29
Lynn Schofield Clark, The Parent App: Understanding Families In The Digital Age (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
30
Melissa Gregg, “The normalisation of flexible female labour in the information economy, “ Feminist Media
Studies 8(3), 2008: 285-299.
31
Noelle Chesley, “Blurring Boundaries? Linking Technology Use, Spillover, Individual Distress and Family
Satisfaction,” Journal of Marriage and Family 67, 2005: 1237-1248.
32
Melissa Gregg, “The normalisation of flexible female labour in the information economy, “ Feminist Media
Studies 8(3), 2008: 285-299.
33
Manuel Castells, “Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society,” British Journal of Sociology, 51(1),
2000: 5–24; Martin Carnoy, M. Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family, and Community in the
Information Age (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000).
34
Diane Perron, “The new economy and the work–life balance: conceptual explorations and a case study of new
media,” Gender, Work & Organization 10(1), 2003:65–93.
35
Sherry Turkle, “The Tethered/Untethered Self,” in James Katz, ed., Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies
(Cambridge, MIT Press, 2008), 121-138.
36
Julie Frizzo-Barker and Peter Chow-White, “’There’s an app for that’: mediating the mobile moms and the
connected careerists through smartphones and networked individualism,” Feminist Media Studies 12(4), 2012:
580-589.
37
Rachel Crowe and Catherine Middleton, “Women, smartphones and the workplace: pragmatic realities and
performative identities,” Feminist Media Studies 12(4), 2012: 560-569.
38
Horst, Heather A., "The Blessings and Burdens of Communication: Cell Phones in Jamaican Transnational Social
Fields," Global Networks 6( 2), 2006: 143-59.
39
Minu Thomas and Sun Sun Lim, "On Maids and Mobile Phones: ICT Use by Female Migrant Workers in Singapore
and Its Policy Implications," in James Everett Katz, ed., Mobile Communication: Dimensions of Social Policy (New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 175-190.
40
Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller, Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia (London:
Routledge, 2011)
41
Leslie Regan Shade, “Feminizing the mobile: Gender scripting of mobiles in North America, “ Continuum: Journal
of Media and Cultural Studies 21(2), 2007:179-189.
42
Els Rommes, “Creating places for women on the internet: the design of a “women’s square” in a digital city,” The
European Journal of Women’s Studies 9(4), 2002: 400–429.
43
Judy Wajcman, “Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies: In What State is the Art?,” Social Studies of
Science 30(3), 2000: 447-464.
44
Micky Lee, “What's Missing In Feminist Research In New Information And Communication Technologies?,”
Feminist Media Studies, 6(2), 2006: 191-210.
