WOMEN'S INTERNET USAGE ACROSS UNITED KINGDOM AND MALAYSIA

The revolution in information technology has resulted in innovations that are having increasingly important effects on the life of their users, in both their personal and work lives. In particular, the Internet and associated applications such as email and the World Wide Web have had profound impacts over the last twenty or so years that they have been in widespread use, raising issues about various types of ¿digital divide,¿ including that between more and less developed nations. This thesis reports a study carried out on two continents, Europe and Asia, to compare and contrast the adoption of these innovations in a roughly comparable context, that of a University department. Interviews were carried out with 27 women drawn from administrative and academic staff in the University of Brighton (UK) and Kolej Universiti Teknikal Kebangsaan (Malaysia). The results were analysed under the following themes: 1. Differential email usage patterns; 2. Differential web usage patterns; 3. Affective issues around the use of email and Web; 4. Perceptions of the role of the Internet in everyday life; 5. Computer-Mediated and Non-Computer-Mediated communication