Page 222 - Culture Technology Communication

New Technologies, Old Culture 205

girls’ relationships with the Internet in the private school I visited. I
share with Layla my theory about Internet “free time” and its inac-
cessibility for girls at the school. I ask her about the family con-
straints placed upon children. I ask her about her interpretation of
girls’ freedom of movement and association and whether or not she
thinks girls are more encumbered than boys. She observes:

I suppose that’s right. I guess girls are subject to different
expectations than boys. The truth is that there is pressure
on all family members to be at home together for the midday
meal. Afterwards everyone takes a nap. If boys wanted to
skip this meal, then their families would probably overlook
their absence and would explain the situation in terms of
boys needing solidarity with their peers. Girls, however,
need to express their first loyalty to the family and are ex-
pected to be at home, protected and safe.

“And to help with the dishes,” I muse, remembering my own child-
hood. She laughs:

No, Kuwaiti women and girls do not help at home. They
have maids to take care of domestic responsibilities, to
watch the children. It’s just the pressure to be home together
to which girls would be held more strictly to than boys.

Layla is one of the only women I have found whose organiza-
tion has a home page on the Web. I ask her about it and she tells me
that she “helped design it.” I want to ask her to what degree she
helped, but I dare not, lest I loose my place holder in an almost
empty category of Kuwaiti women developing content on the Web.
Her response that “she helped design the home page” is probably
more representative of a woman with the resources to hire another
to do the labor-intensive work required to produce content on the
Web, rather than illustrating a woman afraid of technology.
When asked directly about her understandings of the implica-
tions of the Internet for Kuwaiti society she states:

I’m worried about what the Internet will do to Kuwait. First
of all, this is a society which is not prone to read. The Inter-
net, like satellite TV and video games before it, further en-
courages Kuwaiti youths to avoid reading books. I’m not
sure that they will use the Internet for serious research, as