1. Prof. Tommi Inkinen University of Helsinki
Gendered uses of mobile communication and information society strategies
Prof. Tommi Inkinen
University of Helsinki

2. Contents Background: Data and methods Selected results Conclusions
Mobility
Gender in this paper
Framework
Data and methods
Strategy reading (national information society strategy of Finland 2015)
Citizen survey (2004)
Selected results
Conclusions

3. Mobility (1/2)
Mobility is a broad concept that refers to several aspects of human life (e.g. Kellerman 2006; Larsen et al. 2006).
These include aspects of travel of people for work, leisure, migration and refuge.
Mobility includes also movement of physical and immaterial goods creating a need for transportation and logistical systems.
It also involves communicative and digital dimensions: “virtual travelling” on the Internet, experiences of imaginative travelling through television and communication via personal mobile technologies such as mobile phones.

4. Mobility (2/2)
I use the term “mobility” in a restricted sense to refer to communicative practices and experiences mediated through information and communication technologies.
The empirical data concerns the use of the mobile phone, which is one of the “predominant technologies that constitutes the essence of the mobile communication” by bringing together text, voice and Internet (Inkinen 2003).

5. Gender in this paper
Gender has for a long time been one of the key social dimensions in the analysis of social technologies (Haraway 1991; Wajcman 1991; Turkle 1995; Spender 1995).
I use gender in two meanings:
how gender issues are taken into an account in Finnish national information society strategy (actual document) and in the creation process of that document (meetings)
I also use gender as a variable in the analysis of a survey data. However, I recognize and discuss the historical and societal factors opening the binary concept into a socio-historical development “path”
A relevant reference study in Nordic countries by Mörtberg (2003) who analysed the gendered construction of mobile technologies by using interview data from designers and marketers in the ICT industry.

6. The framework

7. Data and methods
In the strategy reading I examine how the social dimension has been taken into account and how gender issues are present in the latest policy document.
I use selected key words and interpretative reading of the document: “The National Knowledge Society Strategy 2007–2015”
I also use official documentation of the strategy process.
The second part of the data is an extensive citizen survey collected in 2004.

8. Selected results: strategy hits for keywords

12. Conclusions (1/3)
Considering the strategy part of the paper, the hypothesis concerning the invisibility of gender in information society strategies proved accurate.
The problem lies in the fact that the current methods of strategy making are rather monolithic.
The preparing of policies and strategies relies strongly on a certain narrow type of expertise stressing success in competition, an understanding of the indicators of economic success, the ability to rationalise one’s views in the language of strategic aims as well as the achievement of competitive advantage and efficiency gains.

13. Conclusions (2/3)
The work-orientation has a clear gender difference: men value and appreciate mobile technology more than women do. They are also more work-oriented in their mobile communications.
Point: The gender differences tend to increase in the highest education levels. The result is important because some 60% of current university graduates in Finland are women.

14. Conclusions (3/3)
The second important result concerns the experience of safety and of feeling safe. The experience is an individual feeling (or interpretation) of a larger social phenomenon, connecting societal development, social coherence and equality and wellbeing that together result in a safer society with low criminal rates.
These individual practices and experiences can (and should) be connected to the macro-level policy guidance.

15. Further reading and thank you!
Book edited by Priya Ulteng, T. & T. Cresswell: Gendered Mobilities. Ashgate, Aldershot. Includes the chapter:
Inkinen, T. (2008). Gender and the social use of mobile technologies. From information society policies to everyday practices. The case of Finland.
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