Gender and Power in Online Communication

Abstract

Indiana University

Full text

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This paper is not to be reproduced for publication. It will be published soon in The Handbook
of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff, Blackwell Publishers.
Susan C. Herring
Indiana University, Bloomington
Gender and Power in Online Communication
1. Introduction
New communication technologies are often invested with users' hopes for change in the
social order.1 Thus the Internet is said to be inherently democratic, leveling traditional
distinctions of social status, and creating opportunities for less powerful individuals and groups
to participate on a par with members of more powerful groups. Specifically, the Internet has
been claimed to lead to greater gender equality, with women, as the socially, politically, and
economically less powerful gender, especially likely to reap its benefits. The claims include the
following:
Text-based computer-mediated communication, with its lack of physical and auditory cues,
makes the gender of online communicators irrelevant or invisible, allowing women and men to
participate equally, in contrast with traditional patterns of male dominance observed in face-to-
face conversations (Danet, 1998; Graddol & Swann, 1989).
As a network connecting geographically-dispersed users, the Internet empowers women and
members of other traditionally subordinate groups to find community and organize politically in
pursuit of their own interests (Balka, 1993).
The World Wide Web allows women to self-publish and engage in profitable entrepreneurial
activity on a par with men (Rickert & Sacharow, 2000).
Of course, men, too, stand to benefit from anonymous communication, common-interest group
formation, and the commercial potential of the Web. The difference is that for women, the
Internet purportedly removes barriers to participation in domains where barriers do not exist – or
at least, do not exist to the same extent – for men.
1 Radio … The telephone … Cable television …

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Some 20 years after the introduction of the Internet, we may ask whether these potentials
have been, or are in the process of being, realized. Extrapolating from the properties of a
technology to its social effects – a paradigm known as ‘technological determinism’ (Markus,
1994) – tends to overlook the fact that the development and uses of any technology are
themselves embedded in a social context, and are shaped by that context (Kling et al., 2001).
Does the Internet alter deeply rooted cultural patterns of gender inequality, or do those patterns
carry over into online communication? Is Internet technology inherently gender neutral, or does
the fact that it was created by men result in an in-built structural bias that perpetuates male
advantage? At the same time, the Internet is undeniably transforming social behavior as more
and more people go online. Ten years ago, estimates placed the number of female Internet users
at 5% (Sproull, 1992, cited in Ebben & Kramarae, 1993); females now make up slightly more
than half of all Web users (Rickert & Sacharow, 2000). What are the effects of millions of girls
and women entering what was, until very recently, a predominantly male domain?
This chapter surveys research on gender and the Internet published or presented between
1989, when gender issues first began to be raised in print, and the present time. It brings
together research findings and speculations that bear on the claims listed above, and interprets
the available evidence in relation to the larger question of whether – and if so, how – gender
and power relations are affected in and through Internet communication. The body of evidence
taken as a whole runs counter to the claim that gender is invisible or irrelevant on the Internet,
or that the Internet equalizes gender-based power and status differentials. At the same time,
limited trends towards female empowerment are identified, alongside disadvantages of Internet
communication that affect both women and men.
The chapter is organized into five sections. The immediately following section considers
gender in relation to issues of Internet access, both for users and creators of online resources.
Basic access is a prerequisite to online participation, and those who create resources enjoy
greater power to promote their agendas. Evidence is then evaluated that bears on claims of
gender anonymity in interactive computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the Internet.
This section is divided into two parts, the first focusing on asynchronous, and the second, on
synchronous, CMC. The fourth section addresses gender on the World Wide Web, from the
phenomenon of personal home pages, to entrepreneurial uses, to mass uses of the medium. The
final section identifies possible future scenarios, based on current and emergent trends, in an
attempt to answer the question: if the Internet is not yet a level playing field for women and
men, is it more (or less) likely to become one in the future?

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2. Access
In the early days of the Arpanet – the predecessor of the Internet2 –, online access was restricted
to the U.S. defense department personnel and computer scientists (almost entirely male) who
designed and developed computer networking. The Internet, so called since around 1983,
expanded geographically in the 1980s to include more universities, especially faculty and
students in computing-related departments (mostly male). The trend by the late 1980s of
increased diffusion to academicians in other disciplines and employees in a growing number of
workplaces became a full-fledged sweep towards popular access in the 1990s, with the rise of
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that enabled people to connect from their homes. The
percentage of female users increased along with this expansion, as did public knowledge about
the Internet and ease of access to it.
Nonetheless, access remained a stumbling block for gender equity throughout much of the
1990s. Women were initially more reticent about using computers, less willing to invest time and
effort in learning to use the Internet, and less likely to be employed in workplaces with Internet
access (Balka, 1993). When they did log on, they were more likely than men to be alienated by
the sometimes contentious culture they encountered online (Herring, 1992, 1993). However,
there is evidence that all this is changing. The increasing popularization and commercialism of
the Internet since the advent of the World Wide Web has brought with it ubiquity, easy-to-use
graphical interfaces, and mainstream content (e.g., news, online shopping), making the Internet
a “safer”, more familiar-seeming place. Moreover, a new generation of young people has been
raised using, and feeling comfortable with, the Internet. Given that slightly more than 50% of
Web users in the U.S. are now female, according to one study (Rickert & Sacharow, 2000), it
would appear that the Internet is presently no more difficult for those females to use, nor more
intimidating, than it is for males.3
However, while the gender digital divide is being bridged in terms of who logs on to the
Internet, at least in the U.S., women and men still do not have equal access to the creation and
control of what takes place on the Internet. Roles that require technical expertise, such as
network administrator, are disproportionately filled by men, consistent with the traditional
association of technology with masculinity (Wajcman, 1991). Setting up one’s own bulletin
board system (BBS), listserver, or Web site requires not only technical skills, but an investment in
equipment, Internet connectivity, and time and effort for ongoing maintenance, which taken
together, presupposes a high level of motivation and interest in the technical aspects of
2 For a history of the development of the Arpanet and the Internet, see Hafner and Lyon (1996).
3 Women’s access to the Internet is considerably more limited in Islamic and developing nations, although change in
the direction of greater access is taking place there as well (Harcourt, 1999; Wheeler, 2001).

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computer networking. Women, given their lower numbers in fields such as computer science,4
are less likely to have the necessary background and motivation to do this. As a consequence,
most computer networks are set up and run by men, especially in the early days of new
technologies such as the Web, when the norms for use of the technology emerge. The claim
that everyone has equal access to the Internet tends to overlook the fact that all access is not
equivalent – viewing a Web site or posting to a discussion group does not give an individual the
same degree of power as creating and administering the Web site or the server that hosts the
discussion group. The latter remains the preserve of a technologically-skilled – and mostly male –
elite.
At the same time, ordinary users are empowered to create Internet content to a greater extent
than in mass media such as television and radio. Not only can users participate in online
discussion, almost anyone can create and moderate a discussion forum, or create their own Web
pages. Females as well as males avail themselves of these opportunities, which require some
initiation and maintenance effort, but which are mostly supported technically by others (e.g.,
network administrators). Moreover, since site administrators often exercise minimal control over
the content available on their site, discussion group leaders and Web page creators enjoy
considerable freedom to create Internet content, although that content is subject to filtering and
blocking by Internet access portals. Some long-running and popular Internet sites, such as the
Women’s Studies List (WMST-L; Korenman & Wyatt, 1996) and the Women.com Web site
(Brown, 2000), were developed and are run by women; in these sites, content is generated by
the female owners and users, not by the technical support staff. Thus, although technological
control of the Internet remains predominantly in the hands of men, women have ready access to
computer-mediated communication and the Web, including the possibility of creating content
therein.
3. Computer-Mediated Communication
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) comprises a variety of interactive socio-
technical modes including e-mail, discussion lists and newsgroups, chat, MUDs (Multi-User
Dimensions) and MOOs (MUDs, Object Oriented), ICQ (I Seek You), and IM (Instant
Messaging). Of these, e-mail and discussion groups have been in existence since the early
1970s; chat, social MUDs and MOOs date to the late 1980s; and ICQ and IMs were introduced
4 Recent estimates place the number of female CS professionals at around 35%, mostly clustered in lower-level
positions. Moreover, the number of female college students majoring in CS has declined, rather than increased,
during the growth in popularity of the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s (Klawe & Leveson, 1995).

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in the mid-1990s.5 All these CMC modes are textual, involving typed words that are read on
computer screens.
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” A cartoon bearing this caption was
published in The New Yorker in July of 1993, but the notion that Internet communication was
anonymous had already appeared in scholarly research in the 1980s. Because you cannot see or
hear your interlocutors in text-only CMC, the argument goes, you have no way of knowing who
– or what – they are. A version of this claim was first advanced with reference to gender by
Graddol and Swann (1989), who noted that participation by men and women tended to be
equalized in an anonymous computer conferencing system used in the British Open University.
They explicitly contrasted their observations on computer conferencing with the traditional
pattern of male domination of mixed-sex face-to-face discourse. For the most part, however,
early CMC research did not discuss gender, nor control for it in experimental studies.6
As more women began to venture online in the early 1990s, studies of gender and CMC
started appearing with greater frequency. In contrast to the optimism of the 1980s, the findings
of these studies tended to problematize claims of gender-free equality in cyberspace. In an
important early article documenting the results of an academic listserv group's self-directed
experiment with anonymity, Selfe and Meyer (1991) found that males and participants in the
group who enjoyed high status off-line dominated the interaction, both under normal conditions
and under conditions of anonymity. However, some individual women reported feeling freer to
participate when their messages were anonymous.
Soon after, researchers began reporting the use of more aggressive tactics by men in online
discussions, some of it explicitly targeted at female participants (Herring, 1992, 1993; Herring,
Johnson & DiBenedetto, 1992; Kramarae & Taylor, 1993; Ebben, 1994; McCormick &
McCormick, 1992; Sutton, 1994). Using electronically-distributed questionnaires, Herring (1993)
found that women were more likely than men to react aversively to aggression in online
interaction, including falling silent and dropping out of listserv groups. Around the same time,
reports began to surface in the popular press of women on the Internet being the targets of
male intimidation, harassment and sexual deception (Brail, 1994, 1996; Dibbell, 1993; Van
Gelder, 1990). These findings raise an apparent paradox: how can gender disparity persist in an
anonymous medium which allegedly renders gender invisible?
5 For a description and overview of the development of different modes of CMC, see Herring (Forthcoming b).
6 E.g., Kiesler et al. (1984), who concluded on the basis of experimental studies that people are more likely to flame
and otherwise be disinhibited in CMC than in face-to-face communication. However, subsequent Internet research
(e.g., Herring, 1994) identified gender differences in flaming.

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3.1. Asynchronous CMC
The first part of the solution to the paradox has to do with the meaning of the term
'anonymity'. Whereas asynchronous CMC on the Internet – the object of most of the early
descriptions – offers the theoretical possibility of anonymity, in practice true anonymity was
somewhat difficult to achieve in the early days of the Internet, requiring the use of an
anonymizing service or the ability to forge e-mail addresses. Both of these practices required
knowledge not readily available to all Internet users.7,8 More importantly, it seems that users are
not necessarily interested in exploiting the potential for anonymous interaction – the use of one's
real name lends accountability and a seriousness of purpose to one's words that anonymous
messages lack. Most participants in computer-mediated discussion groups in the 1980s and
1990s interacted in their real-life identities (Collins-Jarvis, 1997; Herring, 1992), without
attempting to disguise their gender.
Still, text-only CMC is less revealing of personal information than face-to-face
communication, and some user names are neutral as to gender. Female users can choose to
present themselves so as to minimize discrimination and harassment by adopting a gender-
neutral name (Bruckman, 1993). After all, in cyberspace others only know what you choose to
present about yourself, the popular view goes. Here the second part of the solution to the
paradox comes in: gender is often visible on the Internet on the basis of features of a
participant's discourse style – features which the individual may not be consciously aware of or
able to change easily. That is, users "give off" information about their gender unconsciously in
interaction (cf. Goffman, 1959), and this information does not depend in any crucial way on
visual or auditory channels of communication; text alone is sufficient.
The linguistic features that signal gender in computer-mediated interaction are similar to
those that have been previously described for face-to-face interaction, and include verbosity,
assertiveness, use of profanity, politeness (and rudeness), typed representations of smiling and
laughter, and degree of interactive engagement (cf. Coates, 1993). There is an overall tendency
for some of these behaviors to correlate more with female CMC users, and for others to
correlate more with males. This does not mean that each and every female and male manifests
7 During the "anonymity" experiment in the Selfe and Meyer study, the listowner arranged to have identifying
information stripped from message headers prior to distribution of messages to the list.
8 Contemporary asynchronous discussion forums hosted by Web sites make it easier for users to be anonymous, by
requiring only that they type in something that satisfies the format of an email address as an identifier for purposes
of registering to use the site. Since the email addresses are often not verified by the site, many users simply make
them up.

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the behaviors; exceptions to the tendencies can readily be found.9 It does mean, however, that
gender predicts certain online behaviors with greater than chance frequency when considered
over aggregate populations of users, controlling for variables such as age, topic, and the
synchronicity of the medium.
In asynchronous CMC such as takes place in discussion lists and newsgroups on the Internet
and Usenet, males are more likely to post longer messages, begin and close discussions in
mixed-sex groups, assert opinions strongly as "facts", use crude language (including insults and
profanity), and in general, manifest an adversarial orientation towards their interlocutors
(Herring, 1992, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, forthcoming a; Kramarae & Taylor, 1993; Savicki et al.,
1996; Sutton, 1994). In contrast, females tend to post relatively short messages, and are more
likely to qualify and justify their assertions, apologize, express support of others, and in general,
manifest an "aligned" orientation towards their interlocutors (Hall, 1996; Herring, 1993, 1994,
1996a, 1996b; Savicki et al., 1996). Males sometimes adopt an adversarial style even in
cooperative exchanges, and females often appear to be aligned even when they disagree with
one another, suggesting that these behaviors are conventionalized, rather than inherent
character traits based on biological sex. Moreover, there is evidence that the minority gender in
an online forum tends to modify its communicative behavior in the direction of the majority
gender: women tend to be more aggressive in male-dominated groups than among other
women, and men tend to be less aggressive in female-dominated groups than in groups
controlled by men10 (Baym, 1996; Herring, 1996b). This observation suggests that the more
numerous a gender group is online, the greater the influence it will have on shared discursive
norms.
Politeness is one common means through which gender is cued in asynchronous CMC.
Women are more likely to thank, appreciate and apologize, and to be upset by violations of
politeness: they more often challenge offenders who violate online rules of conduct (Smith et al.,
1997), and predominantly female groups may have more, and more strictly enforced, posting
rules designed to ensure the maintenance of a civil environment (Hall, 1996; Herring, 1996a). In
contrast, men generally appear to be less concerned with politeness; they issue bald face-
threatening acts such as unmitigated criticisms and insults, violate online rules of conduct,
tolerate or even enjoy 'flaming', and tend to be more concerned about threats to freedom of
expression than with attending to others' social "face" (Herring, 1994, 1996a, 1999). These
patterns have been noted even in gay and lesbian discussion groups (Hall, 1996), and among
9 For example, Bucholtz (Forthcoming) finds differences from the generalizations presented here among female and
male hackers on a Web-based discussion forum for computer specialists.
10 An exception is men who infiltrate female-centered groups for the purpose of disrupting the discourse of the group
(see, e.g., Collins-Jarvis, 1997; Ebben, 1994)

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women who have succeeded in traditionally male-dominated professions such as computer
science (Herring & Lombard, 1995). "Inappropriately" appreciative or contentious messages can
"give away" individuals in Internet discussion groups attempting to pass as the opposite gender,
evidence that stereotypes about online gender styles based on these patterns have emerged
(Herring, 1996a).
Examples of a male-style message (making use of sarcasm and insults) and a female-style
message (expressing appreciation, support and a qualified assertion) are given in Figures 1 and
2.11 Females are much less likely than males to produce messages like Figure 1, and males are
much less likely than females to produce messages like Figure 2.
Figure 1. A male posting to a discussion group (responding to a male message)
>yes, they did...This is why we must be allowed to remain armed...
>who is going to help us if our government becomes a tyranny?
>no one will.
oh yes we *must* remain armed. anyone see day one last night abt
charlestown where everyone/s so scared of informing on murderers
the cops have given up ? where the reply to any offense is a public
killing ? knowing you/re not gonna be caught cause everyone/s to
afraid to be a witness ?
yeah, right, twerp.
> ----[Ron] "the Wise"----
what a joke.
Figure 2. A female posting to a discussion group (responding to a female message)
>Aileen,
>
>I just wanted to let you know that I have really enjoyed all your
>posts about Women's herstory. They have been extremely
>informative and I've learned alot about the women's movement.
11 The male message is from POLITICS-L; the female message is from WOMEN-L; both are by -subscription discussion
lists. These examples are discussed in more detail in Herring (1996a).

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>Thank you!
>
>-Erika
DITTO!!!! They are wonderful!
Did anyone else catch the first part of a Century of Women? I really
enjoyed it. Of course, I didn't agree with everything they said....but
it was really informative.
Roberta~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gender differences in online communication tend to disfavor women. In mixed-sex public
discussion groups, females post fewer messages, and are less likely to persist in posting when
their messages receive no response (Broadhurst, 1993; Herring, forthcoming a). Even when they
persist, they receive fewer responses from others (both females and males), and do not control
the topic or the terms of the discussion except in groups where women make up a clear majority
of participants (Herring, 1993, forthcoming a; Herring, Johnson & DiBenedetto, 1992, 1995;
Hert, 1997). The lesser influence exercised by women in mixed-sex groups accounts in part12 for
why women-centered and women-only online groups are common (Balka, 1993; Camp, 1996),
whereas explicitly designated men-only groups are rare.13
Moreover, an inherent tension exists between the conventionally masculine value on
agonism and the conventionally feminine value on social harmony. The contentiousness of male
messages tends to discourage women from participating, while women's concern with politeness
tends to be perceived as a "waste of bandwidth" by men (Herring, 1996a), or worse yet, as
censorship (Grossman, 1997; cf. Herring, 1999). This tension does not inherently favor one
gender over the other – each value system potentially constrains the other. In Internet discussion
groups, however, where civil libertarian values have traditionally constituted the dominant
ideological context, and where few structures are in place to sanction anti-social behavior,
aggression tends to prevail over less aggressive behaviors. In a number of documented cases,
repeated aggression from disruptive males has forced women-centered online forums to
disband, move elsewhere, and/or reconfigure themselves with strict rules and regulations
regarding acceptable participant conduct (Collins-Jarvis, 1997; Ebben, 1994; Reid, 1994).
12 The other part of the explanation involves freedom from harassment; see discussion below.
13 Many groups are implicitly men-centered, but they are not usually designated as such with the modifier 'men' in
the group's name in the way that women-centered groups have 'women' as part of their names (e.g., Women's
Wire, the Women's Studies list, the Society for Women in Philosophy list).

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Some evidence suggests that women participate more actively and enjoy greater influence
in environments where the norms of interaction are controlled by an individual or individuals
entrusted with maintaining order and focus in the group. Thus women-centered groups whose
moderators place restrictions on the number or nature of messages that can be posted,
particularly when contentious (challenging, insulting, etc.) messages are discouraged, tend to
flourish, with large, active memberships and widespread participation (Camp, 1996; Korenman
& Wyatt, 1996). Female students also participate more – sometimes more then male students –
in online classrooms in which the teacher controls the interaction, even when the teacher is male
(Herring & Nix, 1997; Herring, 1999). While this result may appear initially puzzling – how can
women be "freer" to participate when they are "controlled" by a group leader? – it makes sense
if the leader's role is seen as one of ensuring a civil environment, free from threats of disruption
and harassment. The need for such insurance points to the fundamental failure of "self-
regulating" democracy on the Internet to produce equitable participation: when left to its own
devices, libertarianism favors the most aggressive individuals, who tend to be male. Consistent
with this imbalance, male respondents to an Internet-wide survey cited "censorship" as the
greatest threat to the Internet, whereas females cited "privacy" as their greatest concern (GVU,
1997).14
3.2. Synchronous CMC
The studies cited above reveal some of the mechanisms by which gender disparity operates
in asynchronous computer-mediated communication, despite the potential of the medium to
neutralize gender differences. Some writers remain optimistic, however, as regards synchronous
("real-time") chat modes such as Internet Relay Chat and MUDs and MOOs. Pointing out that
many of the asynchronous studies focus on professional (e.g., academic) users, Grossman (1997)
speculates that the real-world power hierarchies in such groups carry over into the virtual
domain. Power dynamics of this sort, including gender hierarchy, should be irrelevant in casual
chat in which users have no real-world connections. Danet (1998) is similarly optimistic,
although for different reasons. Chatters are more anonymous than participants in asynchronous
discussion groups, in that recreational chat environments encourage users to take on
pseudonyms. For Danet, these pseudonyms function as masks which invite experimentation with
gender identities in playful, "carnivalesque" ways, liberating users from restrictive gender
binaries.
14 I interpret the women’s response to reflect a concern for their personal safety, e.g., from predatory male behaviors,
rather than a concern for encryption or hacking issues, the other sense in which “privacy” on the Internet could be
interpreted (but cf. Gilboa 1996). Respondents were given a limited list of “concerns” to choose from in the
questionnaire; this list did not include “safety” or “harassment”. For further discussion of the gendered dimensions
of libertarian ideology on the Internet, see Ess (1996) and Herring (1999).

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The available research suggests that in the gender realm as in other domains, synchronous
CMC both differs from and resembles asynchronous CMC. Some of the research initially appears
to bear out predictions of greater gender equality. Males and females tend to participate more
equally in chat environments, both in terms of number of messages and average message length
(Herring, 1999). On average, response rates to males and females are also more balanced; if
anything, females tend to receive more responses to their messages than males (Bruckman,
1993; Herring & Nix, 1997). In apparent support of Danet's claim, the literature also contains
anecdotal reports of play with gender identity, including gender switching sustained over periods
of weeks or months (Bruckman, 1993; McRae, 1996).
These observations notwithstanding, gender is far from invisible or irrelevant in recreational
chat. IRC users frequently ask other participants about their biological sex, along with their age
and location (abbreviated 'asl'). Moreover, they display their gender through their message
content, use of third person pronouns to describe their actions, and nickname choice (Herring,
1998).15 Less conscious differences in discourse style are also evident. In a study of the use of
'action verbs' in a social MUD, Cherny (1994) found that female-presenting characters used
mostly neutral and affectionate verbs (such as 'hugs' and 'whuggles'), while male characters
used more violent verbs (such as 'kills'), especially in actions directed towards other males.
Similarly, Herring (1998) found that females on IRC typed three times as many representations
of smiling and laughter as did males, while the gender ratio was reversed for aggressive and
insulting speech acts. Males also produced overwhelmingly more profanity and sexual
references. These findings parallel the finding that women and men in asynchronous discussions
tend to use different discourse styles – aligned and supportive, as compared to oppositional and
adversarial (Herring, 1996a, 1996b). Rodino (1997) concludes a case study of an IRC interaction
by noting that "despite multiple and conflicting gender performances [by one participant], the
binary gender system is alive and well in IRC."
Examples of a female-style IRC exchange (including expressions of support, appreciation,
smiling/laughter, and affectionate actions) and a male-style IRC exchange (making use of
profanity, insults, sexual references, and violent actions) are given in Figures 3 and 4 (from
Herring, 1998).16 Not all female and male chat participants use these styles, but when they are
used, they tend overwhelmingly to be produced by one, and not the other, gender.
15 As Danet (1998) notes, many nicknames in IRC are unrevealing as to gender, but some index gender: lisa1,
CoverGirl, shyboy, GTBastard, etc. (Herring, 1998).
16 The female example is from the channel #love; the male example is from the channel #teensex. Both channels are
on the EFNet, a largest and popular IRC network.

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Figure 3. A chat exchange between females
* KikiDoe *huggers* beff to her death hahaah
<Beth_> :)
<Beth_> you guys are so great! *happy sobs*
<KikiDoe> beth dats cause we have you
Figure 4. A chat exchange among males
<wuzzy> any ladies wanna chat??
<[Snoopy]> fonz: she nice
<LiQuIdHeL> FUKCK YOU
<[Snoopy]> fuck you little boy
<LiQuIdHeL> NO FUCK YOU
<mature> snoopy u r ???????????????????
<[Snoopy]> its past your bedtime
<[Snoopy]> are you talking?
* LiQuIdHeL kicks [Snoopy] in the nuts causing them to dangle out your nose like
fuzzy dice on a rear view mirror...;) have a nice day
Nor is the apparent equality of participation what it seems on the surface. Little variation is
possible in message length in most chat modes, given constraints on buffer size and typing time
in real-time interaction. Most synchronous chat messages are short, between 4 and 12 words in
length, with the variation conditioned by the number of interlocutors (dyads tend to type longer
messages than groups; see, e.g., Cherny, 1999) more than by participant gender. As regards
frequency of posting, public chat rooms are typically frequented by more males than females (by
some estimates, three males to every female), but those females who do participate receive a
disproportionate amount of attention, much of it sexual in nature (Bruckman, 1993; Herring,
1998, 1999; Rodino, 1997). The most common "gender switching" patterns reflect this
dynamic: females tend to assume gender-neutral pseudonyms in order to avoid sexual attention,
while males assume female-sounding names in order to attract it (Bruckman, 1993; Herring,
1998).
As in asynchronous CMC, instances of aggression against women are also found, and these,
too, tend to be of a sexual nature. Dibbell (1993) describes a textually-enacted "rape" on a
social MOO, and Reid (1994) reports an incident on a support MUD for sexual abuse survivors
in which a male-presenting character named 'Daddy' shouted graphic enactments of sexual
abuse to all present on the MUD. Such occurrences expose the dark side of recreational CMC, in

13 Herring.doc
which anonymity not only fosters playful disinhibition (Danet et al., 1997), but reduces social
accountability, making it easier for users to engage in hostile, aggressive acts. A number of
harassment incidents target women who have gender-neutral pseudonyms (Herring, 1999),
suggesting that chatters, like emailers, give off gender cues through their interactional style, and
thus that pseudonyms alone may be insufficient to mask online gender.
What, then, of the cases of successful online gender-bending that some authors point to in
support of the claim that CMC deconstructs gender? Empirical observation of large populations
of synchronous CMC users suggests that such cases are actually rather infrequent. Based on
several years of observation, LambdaMOO founder and chief wizard Pavel Curtis (1992)
concluded that sustained gender switching is rare in LambdaMOO: because of the effort
involved in trying to be something one is not, most participants interact as themselves,
regardless of the name or character description they choose. In support of this, Herring (1998)
found that 89% of all gendered behavior in six IRC channels indexed maleness and femaleness
in traditional, even stereotyped ways; instances of gender switching constituted less than half of
the remaining 11%. In theory, it is possible that gender switching takes place more often, but is
so successful that it goes undetected. In practice, however, IRC users give off gender cues
frequently (an average of once every 3-4 lines of text in the Herring (1998) study), such that the
longer someone participates, the more likely it is that they will reveal their actual gender. Thus
gender differences – and gender asymmetry – persist, despite the greater anonymity and relative
absence of externally-imposed power hierarchies in synchronous CMC.
4. The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web, introduced in the U.S. in 1991, began attracting widespread
attention in 1993 with the launching of the Mosaic graphical browser. Currently, Web browsing
is the “killer ap” of the Internet (Pastore, 2000), rivaling even e-mail in popularity, and its rate of
use continues to grow. The Web, more than any other Internet application, was responsible for
bringing women online in large numbers in the mid-1990s. Indeed, in their August 2000 report
that women make up 50.4% of Web users, Media Metrix calls it the “Women’s Web” (Rickert
& Sacharow, 2000). Two properties of the Web set it apart from text-based CMC. First, it is
multi-modal, linking text, graphics, video, and audio. Second, it is primarily a one-way broadcast
(mass) medium, in which “pages” created by an author are read and navigated by readers. How
is gender represented, graphically and symbolically, on the Web, and to what extent are women
involved in creating and administering Web content?
4.1. Graphical representation

14 Herring.doc
Multimedia are celebrated for their potential to create rich ‘virtual realities’ which mirror off-
line physical reality (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). At a basic level, the graphical capabilities of the
Web allow photographs to be displayed on Web pages, and both males and females make use
of this capability. ‘Anonymity’ is not a particular virtue on the Web, although one is free to select
any image to represent oneself, since the actual physical appearance of the creator of the pages
remains hidden, as in text-based CMC. Researchers have observed that young women’s self-
representations in personal homepages are often sexualized, involving provocative clothing
and/or postures (Blair & Takayoshi, 1999). Similarly, on the amihot.com site, where women and
men post photographs of themselves to be rated and commented on by others, female images
are more sexually provocative, and more likely to attract comments about physical appearance,
than are male images, which are more likely to be humorous or deliberately offensive in their
presentation (Bella, 2001). In both of the above cases, photographs of the actual individuals
seem mostly to be involved, although graphical avatars in chat environments display similar
tendencies when users represent themselves with photographs of famous people or cartoon
images (Kolko, 1999; Scheidt, 2001).
Researchers are divided as to whether self-representation on the Web along stereotypical
gender lines is harmful. Blair and Takayoshi (1999) critique the practice on the grounds that it
perpetuates the cultural myth of woman as sex object. They point out that even when the
women themselves consider displaying their images online as an act of self-empowerment, the
reception and use of those images can objectify them. For example, the jennicam.com site, on
which a young woman broadcasts a continuous live video feed of the interior of her apartment,
is especially popular among men, a number of whom consider Jenni their “virtual girl friend”,
although she has no reciprocal knowledge of them (O’Sullivan, 1999; Snyder, 2001). Another
well-known site, “Babes on the Web”, created in the mid-1990s by a man named Robert Toups,
linked to (and rated in offensively sexist terms) photographs on women’s homepages without
their permission (Kibby, 1997; Spertus, 1996). In the former case, Jenni is fettishized even
though her site is not primarily sexual in content; in the latter case, serious, professional
photographs of academic women were “co-opted” as part of Toups’ site. Thus the problem of
objectification of images of females on the Web exists independently of the “provocativeness”
of the images, recalling the wider phenomenon of objectification of females off-line.
These representations become additionally problematic when they are viewed and assessed in
relation to the prevalence of pornography on the Web. Internet pornography, featuring mostly
images of naked or partly-naked female bodies, is readily accessible for free, including hardcore
types that are illegal in the United States (King, 1999; Mehta & Plaza, 1997). Pornography
typically represents women in sexually submissive positions, in degrading circumstances, or as
promiscuously wanton; it is produced primarily by men for men, constructing women’s bodies as
objects for male use (Fedler, 1996; see also discussion in Di Filippo, 2000). By the mid-1990s, a

15 Herring.doc
search for the word ‘woman’ on the Internet turned up numerous porn sites, and terms like
‘babe’ generated almost exclusively pornographic hits. The ‘Babes on the Web’ site and the
jennicam site, with its occasional female nudity, are readily subject to interpretation by their
(mostly male) viewers in terms of the culture and values of online pornography.
However, not all writers about the Internet are troubled by sites that represent women in
sexualized terms. Kibby (1997) argues that women who create their own home pages and Web
sites exercise control over the representation of their bodies and personae online, and need not
be affected by responses such as Toups’ (see also Cheung, 2000). ‘Pro-sex’ feminists (Bright,
1997) champion the right of women to consume and produce pornography, and see in the
Internet an opportunity for them to express themselves sexually as a path to self-knowledge and
empowerment (Clements, 2001), as well as for financial gain (Glidewell, 2000).
Finally, not all representations of women on the Web are stereotypically gendered. Kibby (1997)
and Blair and Takayoshi (1999) point to Web sites created by women for women, many by
Generation X-ers, which subvert traditional representations of gender, e.g., by representing
women as strong and active in non-traditional domains, and by ironically adopting “retro”
images (for example, of 1950s housewives) to represent them17 (Brown, 2000; Vollmer, 2001).
The content of such sites has been described as “edgy” and intelligent (Brown, 2000),
constituting a subversive discourse that co-exists alongside traditional gender discourses.18
4.2. Commercialization
The greatest single change affecting the Internet in recent years has been the commercialization
of the World Wide Web. Accelerated by the termination of U.S. federal funding for the Internet
backbone in 1995 (McChesney, 2000), commercialization has opened the door to mass media
infiltration of the Internet, as well as creating opportunities for individual entrepreneurs to start
their own online businesses. These developments are claimed to benefit women, who are the
primary consumers in first-world economies, but who have traditionally been excluded from
control and ownership in the commercial realm.
The Web can be considered a mass medium. It reaches a wide audience (Morris and Ogan,
1996), and content created by individuals or organizations is broadcast to viewers, although the
viewers are less passive consumers of the content than with traditional mass media such as
17 See, for example, the PlanetGrrl Web site, at http://www.planet.grrl.com/.
18 However, criticism has been directed at such sites as well, primarily for containing a considerable residue of
traditional content (dating and beauty tips; horoscopes, etc.), and for their tendency to become increasingly
‘mainstream’ over time (Brown, 2000); see also below.

16 Herring.doc
television (O’Sullivan, 1999).19 The Web is also, increasingly, a channel of diffusion for
traditional print and broadcast media. The recent AOL-Time Warner merger consolidated a large
Internet service provider with a media conglomerate that broadcasts television news, publishes
magazines and books, and owns a record label. Corporate mass media interests, on the Internet
and off, are controlled almost exclusively by men.
At the same time, profit can be generated through allowing advertising banners to be
placed on individual Web sites. This gives rise to a type of grassroots online publishing that
extends beyond the personal home page into the commercial domain. A number of women-
oriented Web sites in this category, such as Cybergrrl and women.com, are analogous to general
interest magazines, and originally employed a number of veterans of the alternative “zine”
movement (Brown, 2000). However, although started by women to provide intelligent and
politicized content, many such sites now offer increasingly mainstream fare. Thus women.com,
begun in 1993 as Women’s Wire, an online discussion forum for early adopter women, has
merged with the Hearst women’s magazine empire; its content now includes online versions of
mainstream women’s magazines such as Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping. The
most popular women’s site, iVillage, was founded by a woman but has since been taken over by
a man; it offers “baby clothing and pregnancy calendars, fad diets and personal shoppers”
(Brown, 2000), framing women as individuals whose careers are secondary, and who have a
constant need to improve themselves and please others (Paasonen, 2001). Brown attributes the
trend towards mainstream content to commercialization, specifically, to the need for Web site
producers to compete in a mass medium in which the greatest profit is achieved by catering to
the lowest common denominator.
Culturally-stereotyped gender roles and interests are also reflected in Web usage patterns.
According to the Media Metrix report (Rickert & Sacharow, 2000), women are the majority
visitors to toy retailer sites, women’s portals such as iVillage.com and women.com, greeting card
sites, retail savings sites, and health sites. Men, in contrast, are the majority on sites containing
technical content, financial information, sports, and news (CyberAtlas, 2000).20 The response of
the business community to such findings is to target online advertising along gender lines
(CyberAtlas, 2000), thereby further reifying gender stereotypes. Thus while the Web may make
women’s (and men’s) lives more convenient, it does not appear to be leveling gender
asymmetries.
19 For example, viewers of Web sites can navigate through the site, choosing what to view, and in some cases,
providing input to the site itself.
20 However, the most popular sites visited by both women and men are familiar portals, search engines, and general-
interest retail sites such as amazon.com, rather than sites offering gender-specific content (Rickert & Sacharow,
2000).

17 Herring.doc
At the same time, if commercialization profits individual women, they can become
empowered, through wealth, to make more far-reaching changes. Carlassare (2000) asserts that
“women entrepreneurs are key players in the Net economy”, as founders and CEOs of portal
and community ventures, Web-based services ventures, e-commerce ventures, and e-business
applications. Among the trends cited by Carlassare as responsible for the growing number of
women entrepreneurs are an increasing recognition of the purchasing power of women online
(in the case of businesses targeted at women), the availability of abundant capital resources, a
growing number of female venture capitalists, and a shortage of people working in the
technology sector. That female venture capitalists are more likely to fund female-founded
businesses, which in turn are more likely to cater to women’s interests, points to the importance
of a critical mass of women online. It further suggests that the more individual women are
successful, the more likely the interests of other women are to be served, through their support.
Still, the number of women-founded businesses online remains low compared to the
number of male-founded businesses. Moreover, companies with female CEOs received only 6%
of all venture capital in 1999, a disproportionately low percentage (Carlassare, 2000). Finally,
both women- and men-owned Web companies have suffered over the past year because of an
overall decline in technology markets. If the rise of female entrepreneurs on the Web has been
predicated in part on the availability of abundant venture capital, women-owned companies are
likely to suffer first, and more acutely, as a consequence of economic downturns.
Pornography sites are a special case of entrepreneurial activity in which the female
entrepreneurs are often sex workers or former sex workers (Glidewell, 2000; Marsh, 2000). As in
other domains, women’s entry into the creation and marketing of online pornography has the
potential to change the nature of the product itself, tailoring it for female consumers (Royalle,
2001). Online porn, like the porn industry in general, is highly profitable, and thus far has been
largely unaffected by the profit losses that have beset other “dot coms” (Cronin & Davenport,
2001; Lane, 2000). Nonetheless, the big profits in online pornography go not to individual
distributors (and even less to individual producers), but rather to a small number of people
(male) who control the major distribution channels, consistent with the gendered hierarchy of
power that characterizes the pornography industry more generally.
4.3. Community and political organization
One of the earliest gender-related claims regarding the Internet was that it would enable
women to organize politically, in order better to serve their common interests (Smith & Balka,
1988). To what extent has this come about? In the 1980s and early 1990s, online discussion
forums (such as the Women’s Studies List and Women’s Wire) were places where women could
find community and share experiences and resources, and women-focused groups proliferated

18 Herring.doc
(including some with a women-only membership policy, such as the Systers mailing list; see
Camp, 1996). Some feminist groups also used the Internet to organize for the purpose of
undertaking political action, although such uses were less common (Balka, 1993). The advent of
the Web allowed for easier and better resource sharing: files could be accessed by clicking,
rather than by downloading attachments or using a file transfer protocol, and graphics and
sound, rather than just text, could be shared. A number of non-profit organizations, from the
Feminist Majority Foundation to the United Nations, have made use of the Web to make
information available to women on topics ranging from elections to aging to lesbian diversity to
online harassment.
However, posting resources on a Web site is not the same as organizing politically. Brown
(2000) laments the failure of the Web to fulfill the earlier dream of an online “feminist
revolution”, suggesting that this may have been a minority dream in the first place.21 The
typical female Internet user has changed over the past decade, from the educated academic
woman influenced by the feminism of the 1970s and 1980s, to the middle-class post-feminist
twenty-something; the political goals of the former are not necessarily shared by the latter
(Wakeford, 1997). This generational and demographic shift is also reflected in a discursive shift,
away from grassroots politics and sisterhood, to individual self-realization, in Western discourses
about feminism online. Thus the grrl.com site has a “fame” page listing all media citations of the
founder, as an example of a “grrl” who has fulfilled her personal goal (in this case, of becoming
famous). And a U.S. stripper’s Web site defines stripping as a feminist act, on the grounds that it
is a form of self-expression and a path to self-awareness (Clements, 2001).
This trend away from social action to individual fulfillment is consistent with a larger trend on the
Internet whereby communitarian discourses and discourses about participatory democracy are
receding in importance as commercialism comes increasingly to the fore. Both trends are part of
a larger cultural shift in the Western world in the direction of individual fulfillment, triggered by
economic prosperity – much of it produced in the information technology sector itself – in the
1990s. In periods of economic expansion, plentiful resources allow all to benefit, and reduce
social unrest. Social activism, in contrast, flourishes in periods of economic contraction, when
biases in the distribution of resources are more apparent. The Arpanet/Internet was developed in
a climate of economic inflation and high unemployment in the U.S. of the 1960s and 1970s.
This was also, not coincidentally, a time of high social (including feminist) ideals, ideals which
carried over into the conceptualization of the Internet by its early users as communal and
democratic.
21 This perspective should be balanced against the considerable evidence of women’s groups outside of North America
using the Internet to mobilize support for women’s political causes, sometimes on an international scale (Harcourt,
2001).

19 Herring.doc
5. Discussion
Having presented evidence regarding gender in relation to online access, CMC, and the
World Wide Web, we return now to consider to what extent the evidence supports the claim
that the Internet fosters gender equality. The answer depends in part, of course, on how one
defines ‘equality’. On the one hand, as a dynamic, rapidly expanding technology, the Internet
has created abundant opportunities for new forms of communication and commerce, from
which both men and women have benefited. Women, as well as men, participate in computer-
mediated communication, start discussion groups, create Web pages, and engage in
entrepreneurial activity online. Moreover, unlike in the early days, there are as many women
online as men.
However, to conclude from this that the Internet has lived up to its potential to create gender
equality would be analogous to claiming that women and men are equal off-line because both
use telephones, moderate meetings, write books, start their own small businesses, and because
they are roughly equally represented in the population of college-educated adults. While some
people would indeed take this as evidence of gender equality, others would point out that men
are better represented in high-status activities, encounter fewer obstacles en route to them, and
receive better pay for them than do women. In other words, the fact that women are
represented in those activities, while important, is not the same as doing them, and being
rewarded for doing them, on a par with men. Moreover, it does not take into account that the
people who own the telephone companies, run the educational institutions, publish the books,
and control the financial resources (to say nothing of leading governments, the military, and
religions) – in other words, the people who exercise power at the highest levels – are
overwhelmingly men. To what extent, if at all, is the situation different on the Internet?
In many respects, the Internet reproduces the larger societal gender status quo. Top-level control
of Internet resources, infrastructure, and content is exercised mostly by men. The largest single
activity on the Internet – the distribution of pornography – is not only largely controlled by men,
but casts women as sexual objects for men’s use. The sexualization of women carries over into
ostensibly neutral domains, such as recreational chat and personal homepages. In serious
contexts, such as academic discussion groups, women participate and are responded to less than
men. Moreover, it appears to be necessary for women to form their own groups to address their
interests, suggesting that the default activities on the Internet address the interests of men. This
evidence points to the persistence of gender disparity in online contexts, according to the same
hierarchy that privileges males over females off-line.
Another sense in which the Internet was predicted to lead to gender equality is by rendering
gender differences invisible or irrelevant. This is clearly not the case; traditional gender

20 Herring.doc
differences carry over into CMC, in discourse style and patterns of disparity and harassment, and
on the Web, in images, content, and patterns of use. At the same time, women themselves
choose to reveal their gender when they could remain anonymous, and produce gendered
images (including pornography), just as women choose to frequent commercial Web sites that
offer mainstream, gender stereotyped content. This leads to an apparent paradox: if traditional
gender arrangements are disadvantageous to women, why do women, when adopting a new
technology, actively maintain them?
Several possible explanations can be advanced to explain this paradox. The younger, less highly-
educated women who use the Internet today (in contrast to the more highly-educated early
adopters) may fail to perceive gender disparity in online social and commercial arrangements.
The arrangements – especially inasmuch as they mirror off-line arrangements – may appear
familiar, appropriate and natural. Moreover, given the richness of opportunities the Internet
currently provides, they may not feel themselves externally constrained from doing whatever
they wish online; that is, they may not perceive the existence of material and ideological biases.
Other women may be aware of gender asymmetries online and wish to change them, but find it
difficult to do so. They may be unwilling or unable to forsake their own traditional gender
socialization in order to “break the mold”. They may feel that local resistance is futile, given the
control exercised by patriarchy over the culture as a whole, of which the Internet is a product.
Historical precedence and the commercialization of the Web both contribute to the appearance
of inevitability of male control of the Internet. The designers and earliest users of the Internet
were white, middle-class males whose norms and values (such as libertarianism) shaped its early
culture (Herring, 1999). The recent permeation of the Web by commerce and the mass media
reinforces the traditional gender status quo and backs it with powerful financial interests (Brown,
2000). Some women may comply with the status quo in their Internet use out of a sense of lack
of choice.
Yet a third possible explanation holds that women (and men) maintain traditional gender
arrangements out of rational self-interest, because such arrangements are perceived to be
advantageous. This is the usual explanation advanced for men’s resistance to social change (i.e.,
the status quo meets their interests), but it can be extended to women online as well. Positive
motivations for signaling (and even exaggerating) gender difference include gender pride, the
social approval accorded to individuals for behaving in gender-appropriate ways, and the
pleasure that can be derived from flirting, which often invokes binary gender stereotypes, in the
relative safety of online environments. Negative rational motivations include the desire to avoid
the unease one might feel in a truly gender-free environment in which one could not rely on
familiar social skills and categorizations (O’Brien, 1999).

21 Herring.doc
It is likely that the ultimate explanation for women’s complicity in reproducing traditional gender
arrangements online involves some combination of the above factors. For the purposes of the
present chapter, we may conclude that the idealistic notions that the Internet would create a
gender-blind environment and level gender-based power asymmetries receive little support from
the evidence about gender and the Internet over the past twenty years. As a booming
technology, the Internet provides opportunities for both male and female users, but does not
appear to alter societal gender stereotypes, nor has it (yet) redistributed power at a fundamental
level equally into the hands of women and men.
6. Future Projections
Framing our assessment in terms of starry-eyed ideals may not reveal the entire picture,
however. The reality may fall short of the projections because the projections were unrealistic in
the first place, e.g., because they were based on the problematic assumption of technological
determinism. Computer networks do not guarantee gender-free, equal-opportunity interaction,
any more than any previous communication technology has had that effect. But the interplay of
a popular technology such as the Internet with social and cultural forces over time may yet lead
to change, just as technologies such as the typewriter and the telephone have altered patterns of
sociability and business practice, and affected women’s lives, in particular, in significant ways
(Davies, 1988; Martin, 1991). What might the long-term effects of the Internet look like, if we
could project into the future?
One possible future outcome is that as more and more women go online globally, a critical
mass will be achieved, such that the Internet truly becomes a balanced, neutral environment. An
optimistic scenario for feminists predicts that an increasing number of women would then be in
control of Web content and distribution, and that more women would become computer
network designers and administrators, giving them real power – both numerical and technical –
to shape the nature and uses of the Internet. If this trend were to continue, the Internet could
become a true “women’s Web”, with women constituting the majority of its users and
administrators. The likelihood of this coming about depends crucially on a critical mass of
women entering information technology professions. Currently, the numbers of women in IT, as
well as in computer science, are declining (Catalyst, 2000); this trend would need to be reversed.
A “women’s Web” would not necessarily result in empowerment, however, if the Internet
were then to become associated with femininity, and decline in overall status as a result. The
process of “feminization” has affected professions such as teacher and secretary, both of which
were originally restricted to men, and originally carried higher status and higher pay. It has also
characterized the evolution of technologies such as the typewriter and the telephone, which
were used by business men before they came to be associated with low-paid female labor

22 Herring.doc
(typists and telephone operators) (Davies, 1988; Martin, 1991). The Internet, like these earlier
technologies, can be considered inherently well-suited to female use, because it is clean, safe,
and can be used indoors. Moreover, a primary use of the Internet – interpersonal communication
– is one at which women have traditionally been considered more skilled than men. As the
definition of computing has evolved from number crunching to communication, some have seen
an unprecedented opening for women to embrace computer technology, symbolically as well as
practically (Kramer & Lehman, 1990). Feminization of the Internet – a process arguably already
underway as regards e-mail use (Cohen, 2001) – could erode this symbolic gain by devaluing
any behavior associated preferentially with women. Carried to an extreme, the process of
feminization could lead eventually to the Internet no longer being defined as a technology, as
has occurred in the past with the typewriter and with domestic technologies such as sewing and
washing machines (Wajcman, 1991).
The final alternative is that the status quo could be maintained, with women (and some men)
primarily restricted to the role of low-level users of the technology, and underlying technological
and ideological control of the medium remaining in the hands of men. This scenario is not the
worst outcome that could be imagined. First, the current status quo represents a gain over the
recent past, in which the Internet was limited to a predominantly male elite; it has now caught
up with the larger society in which it is embedded. Moreover, while the mass medium nature of
the Internet makes it a powerful vehicle for the dissemination and reification of gender
stereotypes (as is also true for television), its ability to be used as a medium of interpersonal
communication (like the telephone) potentially empowers its users to network for non-
traditional, even subversive, ends. One can imagine a future in which the Internet boom has
leveled off, and in which resources become more limited – circumstances under which
disempowered groups are more likely to challenge the status quo. Should the circumstances
propitious for a feminist revolution arise, the Internet may yet enable a fundamentally different
kind of grassroots organization than has historically been possible.
Author's contact information:
Susan C. Herring
SLIS
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405 USA
herring@indiana.edu
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/Faculty/herring

23 Herring.doc
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