discussion7

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Role of ICTs in Work and Family Connections

Paige P. Edley

Renée Houston

The ubiquitous presence of information communication technology (ICT) offers working families opportunities to reassign, privilege, and attend to the intersections of work and family (Bryant & Bryant, 2006). Amidst increasing connectedness and perpetual development, ICTs allow men and women to engage in paid work from home, run their own businesses from a home office, and work at the office while keeping close ties with latchkey kids via mobile phones. Mobile ICTs bring work into the home and home into work. Wireless laptops, mobile network cards, flash drives, email, and smart phones (previously referred to as PDAs), like BlackBerry and iPhone, that combine mobile phones with Internet and web access for downloading applications (apps) for music, global positioning systems (GPS), calendars, email, and social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.) constitute what Weiser (1995; cited in Quesenberry & Trauth, 2005) referred to as “ubiquitous computing”—discreet computers that are so naturally interspersed into our everyday lives that they are deemed invisible and normal. They are considered an extension of the self (Lemish & Cohen, 2005), a fashion accessory (Gant & Kiesler, 2001; Green, 2003; Ling, 2003, 2004; Hulme & Peters, 2001; Katz et al., 2003; Lobet-Maris, 2003; Skog, 2002; all cited in Campbell, 2007; Wei & Lo, 2006), a second skin (Katz, 2003; Katz & Aakhus, 2002), and a fifth limb (Ellwood-Clayton, 2006).

While on one hand ICTs appeal to working parents as a means to make life easier and work more flexible, ICTs also can create longer work hours at home (Kivimaki, 2004; cited in Gregg, 2008; Wajcman et al., 2008) and on the road since they provide both temporal and spatial extensions of work into the home during family and leisure time (Araújo, 2008), as well as travel and commute times (Totten et al., 2007), during weekends, evenings, and early morning hours (Araújo, 2008; Edley, 2001, Edley & Houston, 2006; Hilbrecht et al., 2008). Treating these extended work sessions as normal and necessary means that we ignore the negotiated tensions and contradictions that parents engage in as they try to manage the multiple and changing roles, identities, and social constraints ← 194 | 195 → produced and reproduced in the gendered discourses of work and family (Araújo, 2008; Edley & Houston, 2006; Golden, 2009b).

Here we offer an interdisciplinary perspective focusing on how ICTs intersect with family communication. We recognize the enormity of summarizing a complex social phenomenon and thus focus on selecting cross-disciplinary literature that connects work-life studies with the adoption and uses of ICTs to reveal how family relationships and responsibilities are managed. The review begins by examining assumptions concerning gender that constrain how women participate with technology and in technology-based careers. We posit that cultural meanings and patriarchal structures shape the meanings of ICTs and the ways that people interact with and relate to new media (Kelan, 2007; Lee, 2006; Wajcman, 1991). Technology1 is not only a socially constructed system of knowledge but also a historical, cultural, and politically situated communication artifact that becomes gendered, raced, and classed within dominant systems of knowledge and inequitable power relations. These meanings thereby produce and reproduce stereotypical ways in which women and men use ICTs for family communication.

Next, we turn to how varied literatures reveal gendered implications of work and family management through the uses and innovations of new media. Each new technology is examined to inform social and political implications of work and parental identity construction and the presentation of self via new media and social networking processes. ICT discourses and practices are both empowering and constraining. While we view gender constructions as constantly in flux, we critique how these forms of ubiquitous computing also make the lives of working parents different and more complex, while also producing and reproducing gender stereotypes and the corporate colonization (Deetz, 1992) of relationships and work practices. We conclude by offering potential contributions, critiques, and future research directions.

Review of Literature

Gender and Technology

A swelling tide of research focuses on the challenges, opportunities, and impact of women’s opportunities to work and play with ICTs. Scholars who draw on the cultural construction of both women and technology investigate how gendered constructions constrain women’s opportunities for utilizing technology outside of gendered norms. Within the field of technology studies, several scholars examine how technology is imbued with a masculine identity. In terms of gender, technology is constructed as masculine, which means that men are naturally more at ease, proficient, and in control (Kelan, 2007, 2008; Lee, 2006; Wajcman, 1991; Youngs, 2001). Further, this construction casts men as creators of technology and women as users of men’s creations (Consalvo, 2006). As noncreators, women are not practically constrained in their ability to create or use technology, yet they are ← 195 | 196 → socially constrained to use technology along stereotypical gender lines. When examining the networks of expertise among library and information technology professionals, Houston and Ricigliano (2003) found that women equally recognize both men and women as technical experts, whereas men only recognize men’s expertise. Technology’s construction as masculine parallels the traditional, mechanistic ideology of work2 where rationality is privileged over emotionality. Men’s work is technical and rational while women’s work is caring and emotional (Hochschild, 1989; Kelan, 2008). Interestingly enough, however, many scholars have argued that women are good ICT workers because of their strong social skills (CDI, 2002; Donato, 1990; Funken, 1998; Panteli et al., 2001; Schelhowe, 1997; Woodfield, 2000; cited in Kelan, 2008). Since contemporary ICT work is service and teamwork oriented, ICT workers need to be able to interact with both customers and colleagues. They need to be “hybrids” with both strong technological skills and strong social skills (Woodfield, 2000; cited in Kelan, 2008).

Cautioning against essentializing gender within a binary, Kelan (2007) suggests that men and women may engage with ICTs in gendered ways, not in hierarchically different ways, but in shifting and fluid ways (see also Butler, 1989; Wajcman, 2007, 2008; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Kelan (2007) interrogates gendered differences by examining how women and men relate to technologies. Women view technology as tools, while men view them as toys. She argues that these relationships with technology perpetuate the gendered and stereotypical constructions of technology use and the gendered binaries within society. Kelan (2007) advocates for considering gender as multiple and shifting in technology use and design and also argues for viewing one’s relationship with technology as also shifting one’s subject positions. Hence, we argue that these shifting subject positions include the multiple roles that working parents enact in the course of managing work and family relationships and responsibilities via their relationships with ICTs.

Managing Work and Family Relationships and Responsibilities

Given the vast literature on work-life balance, this review begins with a discussion of some underlying assumptions of work-life balance and then focuses on technology’s intersection with women’s paid work whether at the worksite or home office. The language of balancing home and work is problematic in that it suggests the balancing act is between two separate gendered spheres, the public sphere of work and masculinity and the private sphere of home, family, and femininity (Kirby, Golden, Medved, Jorgenson, & Buzzanell, 2003). The division of public and private spheres into separate, mutually exclusive realms reproduces the “myth of separate worlds” (Kanter, 1977, 1989) or “false dichotomy,” (Martin, 1990), a gendered work/family binary in which men and women traverse the boundaries of public and private in different ways and with different values and privileges attached to their movement (Hochschild, 1989, 1997; Nippert-Eng, 1995; Rakow & Navarro, 1993). Clark (2000) refers to border crossing as the movement both spatially and psycho ← 196 |