Reproducing hierarchies or resisting domination: exploring the gendering of technology spaces in the favelas

Abstract

The relationships among gender, institutional structures, and their associated physical spaces are made visible with the deployment and diffusion of technologies within said spaces. As such, we seek to explore the gendering of technology specifically exploring how users gender gaming spaces and gaming practices. In this article, we challenge the notion of ICTs and gender neutrality exploring how institutional frameworks as well as formal and informal structures impact the ways new technologies are deployed and used. Based on a 10-month ethnography in Community Technology Centers (CTCs) in the favelas, urban slums of Vitória, Brazil, this paper focuses on the uses of ICTs by favela residents, and expands 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.