Everyday mobile feminisms: women’s everyday smartphone practices in Victoria (Australia)

My doctoral research uses a feminist lens to investigate the ways women in Victoria, Australia use their smartphones. In particular, I am interested in giving voice and visibility to women around the ways they use their smartphones in complex and contested ways, contributing to a long history of feminist analyses of the paradoxical nature of technology (Gregg, 2011; Strengers & Kennedy, 2020; Wajcman, 1991). Smartphones have been connected to harms including sexual violence (Henry & Powell, 2015) and online harassment (Jane, 2018). And yet, the relationships that my participants discussed having to their smartphones is, in practice, paradoxical. In the four case study chapters, I demonstrate how a focus on lived experience can highlight the complex and paradoxical ways women use smartphones. Shining a light on these complexities contributes to understanding the everyday experiences of women. I focus particularly on four themes, women and ageing, women living with disability, women and social mobility, and women refugees. I have taken a mixed-methods approach, combining visual cultural studies and ethnographically informed feminist research practices. Through affordance theory (Gibson, 1986), I address both the enabling and the limiting feelings women have about their relationship with their smartphones. My PhD sits at the nexus of feminist studies and everyday smartphone research to investigate the ways diverse women in Victoria, Australia, feel about their smartphones, and what their everyday practices can tell us about the role of smartphones in feminist women’s lives. My research question is: How can understanding women’s mundane practices with their smartphones provide insights into everyday feminism?