Google Answers and Gender

When Craig Silverstein from Google answered questions about Google at UNC last autumn, he also answered a question about Google Answers:

Craig said that many of the people on google answers are actually stay-at-home mothers who can make extra money doing research for others.

(originally at tech-recipes)

Here you can see why Google shut down Google Answers. Not because it wasn't a good and helpful service. And not also because it was fee-based, which is what many commentators have suggested - that Yahoo's social network "Yahoo! Answers" site "beat" Google Answers. It is because people in the Googleplex saw the Google Answers Researchers not as the independent contractors and serious Internet researchers that they were, but as a bunch of bored work-at-home soccer moms.

From the Google Answers Researchers I know, about half are male. And from the females, not all have children, and almost none is a classic "work-at-home" mom. Pinkfreud for example, has written in one of her last answers:

Google Answers was my only source of income and very nearly my
only source of human companionship. Because my health is very dodgy, I
cannot work outside my home nor accept jobs with strict deadlines.
Google Answers was my dream job. The dream is over.

However, Google sees them as someone who could be easily dismissed away. They are not serious workers, they are first and foremost moms. I am not saying that Silverstein is a sexist pig. I am sure he doesn't think of himself as one.

However, I am saying that this is how gender stereotypes and positions are reproduced in cyberspace to the point where these genderised positions are actually tagged to people who at all do not belong to that gender (as I asid, many are male, many have no children). These positions and opinion mix gender ("work at home moms") with the real issue - class (how much does Silverstein make; how much do I make; and how much do people with no access at all to Cyberspace make) and culture/education.

Silverstein makes so much because he's a Stanford-educated "White" American male; the "work-at-home mom" makes so little because she's not a Stanford-educated-career-driven-male, she's first of all defined by Silverstein through her motherness. The centre of her life is not Google Answers, it is her children (or it is so in a reality constructed by these gender definitions). And the source of income is insignificant. She can be a Google Answers Researcher; but she could also do any other thing that work-at-home moms do. After all, it is not really of importance what she does. It is of importance what *he* (Silverstein, Brin, whoever, as long as he is not a work-at-home-dad) does. Therefore, Google Answers could be easily shut down. It is a feminine service, not an important one, and the mothers can get back into selling Tupperware or sending cute little emails with many emoticons to their other housewife-friends.

And this is the way it is. Cyberspace and the new Information Technology have not revolutionised gender relations, despite the fact that theoretically, on the Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog. Be a dog, but don't be a bitch - because unless you are career driven maniac who doesn't want a family (which is something most women are not), you cannot stand the hours in the high-tech industry. Even if you do have an engineering degree, which is a question in itself (less women than men study that).

And despite the fact that telework was supposed to provide people with the opportunity to do serious work despite disabilities, it is again pushed to the bottom of the social ladder. Those who telework are being stigmatised as "work-at-home-moms" even if they are providing a service that is unique and valuable as Google Answers, and provide real advice, unlike other similar services.