Mobile technologies and gender rituals

• Main Author: Soriano, Cheryll Ruth R.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Mobile computing > Sex differences; Communication
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/3663; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/faculty_research/article/4665/type/native/viewcontent/978_1_4666_6166_0.ch005
• Institution: De La Salle University

© 2015, IGI Global. This chapter explores the implications of mobile technologies on gender through the lens of gender rituals. While maintaining social order and social roles, rituals also legitimate key category differences, ideologies, and inequalities. The increasing convergence of media and content in mobile devices, and the blurring of the spaces for work, family, and leisure amidst the landscape of globalization and mobility have important implications for the enactment of rituals, and in the performance of gender. The chapter discusses this mutual shaping of gender rituals and mobile technologies through a case study of the Philippines, with some broad implications for other contexts. The study finds that the personalization, mobility, and multitude of applications afforded by mobile devices offer many opportunities for the exploration of new possibilities for subjectivity that challenge particular gender stereotypes and restrictions while simultaneously affirming particular gender rituals. While exploring the implications of the mobile device on gender in a developing society, the chapter in turn highlights the importance of culturally embedded rituals in shaping and understanding the mobile device's place in society.