Mobile Phones and Gender Empowerment: Negotiating the Essentialist-Aspirational Dialectic

The capability approach has been criticized as individualistic, being reframed in alignment with dominant social structures. We situate individual agency within the frame of power structures, examining empowerment gained from mobile phone use by Vietnamese foreign brides [n = 33] in Singapore. Applying an intersectionality perspective suggested that, while facing discrimination in multiple ways, these migrant women negotiated two strategies for empowerment at the intersection of gender, class, and ethnicity: (1) essentialization of gender and (2) aspiration for autonomy and equality. Mobile phones were found to be active agents in facilitating respondents' aspirations for individual transformation, autonomy, and more powerful decision-making roles. On the other hand, mobiles mediated the enactment of their essentialist beliefs of femininity and gender roles, in contrast with the dominant development discourse of women's empowerment. Sociocultural contexts influencing processes of technological appropriation are discussed, reframing prevailing notions of gender equality within the essentialist-aspirational framework.