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understandings of femininity. Gray (1992) has concluded similarly that women
sometimes use their technical inabilities to make their husbands take up their
share of domestic duties. If they showed technical capacities themselves, they
feared they would be confronted with even more work, now related to the
domestic technologies. Turkle’s and Gray’s observations are further indicators of
the complex, situational and relational character of the articulations of gender
and the Internet.

Conclusion

The interviews have shown the complexity of articulations of gender and
the Internet at the micro-level of everyday lives. Nevertheless, at the macro-level
of social discourse there are rather univocal claims about the Internet being
masculine, feminine or transgender. These claims do have their value as part of the
social struggle about the meaning of the Internet: the claim of it being feminine
redefines technology as a domain appropriate for women; the observations of it
being masculine puts oppressive and sexist practices on and behind the Net on
political and social agendas; and cyberfeminism challenges us to move beyond
the dual categories of gender. In analytical terms, however, these three claims fall
short because of their limited conceptualization of gender and their insufficient
approach of technology. Instead, we proposed a multidimensional understand-
ing of the mutual shaping of gender and technology, in which it is claimed that
in the end the social meanings of the Internet will emerge from particular con-
texts and practices of usage. We have seen from the brief discussion of the inter-
views that the mutual shaping that takes place in the domestication of the
Internet in households of young heterosexual couples tends to frame it in tradi-
tional gender terms. Especially in its connection to the PC, our results show the
Internet being taken up as an extension of male territory in the household. This
does not necessarily lead to the exclusion of women since men are also seen to
consciously leave the PC to their partners. Neither are women passive partners
in this process. They actively take part in interactions which constitute their
respective gender identities with regard to use of the PC and Internet.
Like every academic study, this one has its particular location in time but for
two reasons the longevity of the analysis presented here may be briefer than
usual with academic work. The use of the Internet at present takes place mainly
through the PC and it is particularly the masculine codes of the PC that resound
in the everyday use cultures we found around Internet use. In the future, how-
ever, the Internet is expected to be an ordinary extension of each and every com-
munication technology – television, (mobile) telephone, radio, etc. – and even
of most other domestic technologies from refrigerator to microwave and wash-
ing machine. Each of these appliances have their own gendered uses and
gender codes which will result in new and different articulations of gender with
the Internet. Second, the individualization of media use in the household can
be expected to increase. Many households at present have two television sets
and a mobile phone for each family member. It is only a matter of time before