A feminist political economic understanding of the relations between state, market and civil society from Beijing to Tunis

By focusing on the area of women/gender, telecommunications and new ICTs, this article examines the complex interplay between the state, the market and civil society from the Fourth UN World Conference on Women to the World Summit on Information Society. By adopting a feminist political economic perspective, it is asserted that the mainstream approach to civil society falls short of acknowledging unbalanced power relations between the three parties. The UN and the state both endorse a version of the information society that is conducive to neoliberal capitalism. This article argues that civil society should be given more power in future UN international conventions.