The pandemic of the 21st century has reinforced the use of machines and online tools to deal with the way of life in a new way and the discussion, therefore, on the interrelationship between human body and machine has become even more significant, especially with reference to woman’s body. This has brought the use of new terms like cyberspace, cyber theory, and cyberfeminism in vogue. Cyberfeminism especially dealt with the female body allocated to the machines in the form of cyborgs and the fiction that dealt with this was termed as Techno-fiction. The extraordinary use of technology by human beings has brought things to the new turns of life and it is necessary that it may be questioned as to how the authors of modern fiction are doing in their writings in comparison to real-life situations. Hamid’s novel Exit West portrays a woman migrant character, Nadia, that depended on her cell phone and used it to connect herself not only with her people but also with the world. At many destinations of her and Saeed, where even the signal and battery were poor, it was Nadia who would move about and find electricity for charging her phone and signal to connect herself with the world and find new situations. This opened her world even wider and she connected herself with the women folks around her in London and got shelter and jobs and became independent of her partner. The same is the case with Isma from the novel Home Fire, who uses technology to reach her brother and her sister by using skype. Though she lives far away from her family but is deeply connected with the world around her through a laptop. She uses her emails for this connection as well. So, in the modern world and its heroines in fiction, the use of high-tech gadgets and other technology is the part and parcel of women’s life as it is the part of a man’s life. The same is the case with science fiction movies where women have been seen playing the larger-than-life roles and proving their worth. Cyber games have also reflected similar trends. The uses of modern technologies in the real-life have also provided opportunities to women, especially young ones of endless possibilities. Many young women engage themselves with social media apps like Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. Through these Apps, women are conducting their businesses and earning money. Modern technologies have provided new ways of becoming celebrities and new ways of earning and doing business to women. Till recent times, fiction and other forms of literature did not reflect this extensive use of technology by women. They were if at all, engaged with the domestic technologies, like weaving and knitting as we are shown in the novels of Dickens, Hardy, and Jane Austen. Even the very powerful characters, like Elizabeth, Maggie, Mrs. Defarge did not make use of any technologies of that time. Whatever technology was available was used by men only. But the 20th century, especially the beginning of the 21st century has resulted in the equality of men and women regarding the use of modern gadgets and this has made the lives of women even easier than that of men. However, this use of technology by women has not benefitted all the women at all levels of society and there is a technology divide still going on among the women folks in our rural areas where Internet services are not powerfully available in comparison to the cities. This divide has been recently witnessed during the online training and teaching in Covid19-times that there were frequent complaints from the rural and far-flung areas of Pakistan that they were unable to participate in the online teaching and training processes.
Though in the nascent stage, the uses of modern technology have afforded a more powerful place to women in the social set up of Pakistan and abroad and have, therefore, helped reduce the patriarchal tendencies in the world and lend more equality to women. This development is a feministic tendency of the society which is much more advanced than the previous feminist approaches and makes feminism enter into a new phase of feminism that can be termed as cyberfeminism. This is a new phase of feminism that is engaging women at a broader and higher level. Moreover, it provides easy and rapid connectivity to women in general and so helps them share themselves with their friends and learn from their surroundings. There is a need for caution for walking on this roller coaster of cyberspace and modern gadgetry that we may reduce ills of the society and increase its usefulness by using it and avoid misuses of this new phase of life. only a cautious and useful use of technology can help take the next successful steps of the feminist movement for further empowerment and liberation of women at all levels.
75You, Muhammad Asif, Akhtar Nawaz and 72 others21 comments
