Introduction

In studies of the Internet from the early 1990s to the turn of the century, there was a concern that users of the Internet (or at least the Usenet) were overwhelmingly white, male, American, and highly educated (Barwell & Bowles 2000), and that English dominated much of the Net, with the voices of most women marginalized or silenced (Inayatullah & Milojevic 1999). At the same time there was an ongoing debate about the existence and nature of ‘virtual communities’. Rheingold stated that if he were able to re-write his Virtual Communities, he would have chosen the less contentious term of ‘online social networks’ (Rheingold 2000). Wellman and Giulia argued that virtual communities are computer supported social networks (CSSNs) that provide ‘companionship, social support, information, and a sense of belonging’ and reminded us that people bring their ‘gender, stage in life cycle, cultural milieu, socioeconomic status, and offline connections to their online relationships’ (Wellman & Giulia 1997). Wellman later stated that computer networks are inarguably social networks, ‘loosely bounded and sparsely knit’ which help to increase people's social capital (Wellman 2001: 2031).

This chapter presents the Baby Kingdom (www.baby-kingdom.com) as a strong example of a Chinese language women's virtual community based in Hong Kong. This ethnographic description of the Baby Kingdom asks: How does the Baby Kingdom operate? What makes it a successful virtual community? What do women do in it? The answer is multifold: Hong Kong women use the Baby Kingdom's gendered space to engage in discussion (‘gossip’) to acquire information, forge social bonds, and engage in what Mary Douglas calls ‘the normative debate’, which creates, maintains, and challenges social norms wherever people gather together (Douglas 1992). Pregnant women and mothers in Hong Kong have begun to use the Baby Kingdom as a springboard to exercise their power in the household and in the broader community. It is also a place where women continue to create, transmit, and reshape their expressive culture, that is made up of the domestic arts and domestic rituals in Hong Kong (Yip 1997).

The Baby Kingdom acts as a sort of ‘electronic park bench’ where women meet, gossip, exchange information and stories, plan later meetings, swap or sell goods, and even plan for political action.