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194 Deborah Wheeler

caught doing ‘women’s work.’” 18 When asked about the causes of
change in the younger generations attitudes towards women and
work, this woman observed that younger generations grew up with
satellite TV, were more likely to travel and to study abroad, and thus
were accustomed to different gender roles than their fathers and
grandfathers. Might the Internet, like satellite TV, help to consoli-
date these small shifts in definitions of “women’s work?”

Kuwaiti Networks and Women’s Voices

One of the best ways to understand how the Internet is affecting
women’s lives in Kuwait is through oral testimony of the partici-
pants. The voices of women who are active Internet users reveal im-
portant characteristics regarding the cultural frameworks which
regulate both women’s lives and “networks” in Kuwait. Through
these examples we obtain glimpses of the promise and problems of
new communications technologies for women in the Arabian Gulf.
These narratives were selected because of the women’s differences in
age, status, nationality, profession, and perspective, so as to provide
a representative cross-section of the larger community of Kuwaiti
women who use the Internet in their daily lives.

Nassima 19

Nassima runs the Learning Resource Center at a private school in
Kuwait. She is middle-aged, a Kuwaiti citizen, and a self-taught
computer technology expert. Every day, she introduces new Internet
users to the tool’s power. Yet her words remind us of the ways in
which the Internet can reinforce boundaries between genders, if not
deployed in ways compatible with women’s lives in Kuwait. I visited
her at the school in the last week before classes let out for summer
recess in June of 1997. We spent an hour together talking about the
Internet, education, and gender issues, as well as viewing some of
the educational materials provided by the school to guide Internet
use. We laughed together when we viewed the “bookmarks” stu-
dent’s maintained on the center’s Netscape-based Web browser. The
bookmarks suggested that the Internet connection at the school was
a tool for male pleasure, rather than female gender education/resist-
ance. She observes:

Girls don’t use the Internet unless required to for a class.
Boys come after school and use it for pleasure. They go to