Women’s Empowerment in Digital Media: A Communication Paradigm

Abstract

The study of women’s empowerment, inspired by various women’s movements from the late 1960s onward, encompasses a wide range of concepts, approaches, and practices in different disciplines. Moreover, while the Internet has experienced dramatic technological development since the late 1980s, fierce debates about the empowering potential of the Internet for women’s liberation have also raged. In particular, feminist theorists have grasped this opportunity to enquire whether women can become empowered by the Internet. However, the existing feminist research lacks systematic theoretical frameworks that would help us investigate what roles digital media play in the process of women’s empowerment. This chapter aims to address this gap by drawing on the literature from digital media studies to investigate the communicative affordances of online platforms for the development of women’s empowerment. To approach this problem, there is a need to place communication at the center of the issue in order to conceptualize the open-ended process of women’s empowerment. This chapter starts by acknowledging that women’s empowerment is a multifaceted concept and drawing upon the feminist interpretation of power – the core concept of empowerment – to anchor the proposed argument. In regard to digital media, the existing literature well documents that women have had a great opportunity to capture various forms of horizontal, participatory communication to exercise power in their living circumstances. This sets the scene for creating possible theoretical links between digital media and women’s empowerment. The role of Chinese women’s groups in the process of women’s empowerment will be presented in this chapter to demonstrate the explanatory value of the framework.