"LAN houses are for boys and Telecenters are for girls:" CTCs as Gendered Spaces

Abstract

In every culture men and women differ in their information needs and views about technology. These views, in turn, have an impact on how men and women access and use new technology resources. Although the differences among the sexes are apparent in most contexts, technology deployments continue to be gender indifferent. Based on a 10-month ethnography in Community Technology Centers (CTCs) in the favelas, urban slums, of Brazil, this on going study focuses on the uses of ICTs by favela residents, and develops on the notion of technological space beyond the physical into the domain of space as socially constructed and negotiated, exposing how space can be defined by socially explicit and implicit boundaries.