Gendered Technologies: Youth, Gender and Mobile Phones in Chennai City

Vijay Devadas

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2022, vol. 29, issue 1, 55-75

Abstract: This article explores the role of mobile phones in the lives of the youth in the city of Chennai, South India. Drawing on field research, the article argues that the social life of the mobile phone is gendered. The article curates three narratives to make this argument. The first engages with young men and mobile phones and claims that the technology is instrumental in the construction of normative ideas of masculinity. The second explores the ways in which the technology has empowered young women, enabled mobility, and reconstituted female agency. The third examines the regulation and disciplining of women’s use of and access to the technology through the discourse of maanam . The aim of articulating these three narratives is to demonstrate that the mobile phone is a gendered technology.

Keywords: Youth; gender; mobile phones; mobility; masculinity; Chennai; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09715215211056802 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indgen:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:55-75

DOI: 10.1177/09715215211056802

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Indian Journal of Gender Studies from Centre for Women's Development Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().