The extension of information and communication technologies is purported to provide great opportunities for women, with the potential for empowerment and feminist activism This paper contributes to the debate about women and cyberspace through a focus on the role of the internet in the lives of a group of technologically proficient, socially advantaged white heterosexual new mothers The internet played a central role in providing virtual social support and alternative information sources which increased these women's real sense of empowerment in the transition to motherhood Simultaneously, however, very traditional stereotypes of mothering and gender roles persisted A paradox is evident whereby the internet was both liberating and constraining: it played an important social role for some women while at the same time it encouraged restrictive and unequal gender stereotypes in this particular community of practice An examination of new virtual parenting spaces therefore has a contribution to make in un

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Parenting gone wired: empowerment of new mothers on the internet?

This paper makes a case for cyberspace and geographical space coexisting simultaneously as an interconnected dyadic cyber/space combining the virtually real and the actually real. Based on empirical evidence from a study examining the role of the Internet in the life of new mothers, we investigate the simultaneity of online/onsite experiences through an exploration of cyberspace as a performative liminal space, one where the women ‘tried out’ different versions of motherhood. We suggest that liminality, as a concept that can denote both a space and time of ‘betweenness’, is a useful tool in the virtual geographers ‘conceptual handbag’ as it enables a more lively understanding of cyberspace. But although cyberspace can result in the production of new selves, these selves have residual attachments to embodied experiences and practices. This suggests that new theorizing about cyber/space must combine a consideration of liminality with everyday corporeality.

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Mothers in the making? Exploring liminality in cyber/space

National Research Network on the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning in the New Economy: National and Case Study Perspectives (WALL) founded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

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Annotated bibliography on the changing nature of work and lifelong learning. WALL working paper

The first version of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) was released to users in 1993, and since that time IPUMS has come to stand for interoperable and accessible census and survey data. Initially created to harmonize U.S. census microdata over time, IPUMS now includes microdata from the U.S. and international censuses and from surveys on health, employment, and other topics. IPUMS also provides geo-spatial data, aggregate population data, and environmental data. IPUMS supports ten data products, each disseminating an integrated data collection with a set of tools that make complex data easy to find, access, and use. Key features are record-level integration to create interoperable datasets, user-friendly interfaces, and comprehensive metadata and documentation. The IPUMS philosophy aligns closely with the FAIR principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and re-usability. IPUMS data have catalyzed knowledge generation across a wide range of social science and other disciplines, as evidenced by the large volume of publications and other products created by the vast IPUMS user community.

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Interoperable and accessible census and survey data from IPUMS.

This research aimed to investigate gender and language in the context of educational computer-mediated interactions. As the use of online discussion groups in campus-based education increases, so does the need to investigate the impact of gender on language and communication styles in this context. It has been claimed that the lack of social context cues in computer-mediated communication (CMC) equalises participation, resulting in a more democratic environment than face-to-face communication. However, gender differences in power and language use have been found online. In total, 197 students (148 females, 49 males) participated in open-ended online discussion as an optional part of their introductory psychology module. Informed consent was sought from the online participants to download the electronic discourse for analysis using Atlas.ti 4.2. Participation and language use were analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. A detailed coding scheme was developed during the pilot study that incorporated various linguistic, stylistic, paralinguistic and task variables. This coding scheme was used in subsequent studies and 699 messages from four studies were coded in total. Males and females were similar overall with regard to participation as shown by the total number of posts and mean number of words per post. However, gender-related patterns in language use and interaction styles were found. The results are discussed in relation to previous literature on gender and language in both face-to-face and computermediated contexts and in relation to the democratising theories of CMC. The implications of the results for the use of CMC in Higher Education will also be considered.

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Lisa Ebeltoft-Kraske

Papers

Ipums metadata: Documenting 150 years of census microdata

Letter from the guest editors: The rhetorics of gender in computer-mediated communication