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Technology with Curves: Women Reshaping the Digital Landscape by JoAnn Napier, Denise Shortt and Emma Smith.

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Technology with Curves: Women Reshaping the Digital Landscape by JoAnn Napier, Denise Shortt and Emma Smith

Toronto: Harper Collins, 2001. 272 pgs.

Technology with Curves profiles 57 women who are "reshaping the digital landscape." Co-authors JoAnn Napier, Denise Shortt and Emma Smith say that they hope the stories in Technology with Curves "will inspire [women] to explore opportunities of [their] own" (xiii) in the digital landscape, and they suggest that women capitalize on (and I use this word intentionally) their differences as women to do so. Unfortunately, Napier, Shortt and Smith do not interrogate the capitalism that drives the digital landscape. As a result, the solutions they offer to help women reshape that landscape are limited. However, within these constraints, Technology with Curves does address many of the key issues women face as they live, work and enjoy cultural pursuits in the "digital landscape."

Technology with Curves could probably be called a feminist book. However, as Sarah Mills points out, it is "difficult to define" feminism "because of the many different kinds of feminisms which exist today" (3). While Napier, Shortt and Smith never clearly articulate the model of feminism to which they ascribe, I think Mills' basic definition applies to their project: "[m]ost feminists hold a belief that women as a group are treated oppressively and differently from men, and that they are subject to personal and institutional discrimination" (3). By writing...

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