Codifying inequalities: A feminist critique of digital labour platforms in India's domestic work sector

The labour market, in India, is characterised by informal work arrangements and informal workers. These workers are often without work and income security, social security and food security. Their lives and livelihoods are precarious and they are most often the poorest of the poor. Women's workers, within this section, are even more vulnerable due to their social position and weak bargaining power. The emergence of digital work platforms, called the 'gig' or the 'platform' economy has brought with it significant changes in worker-employer relationships. These workers, like informal workers, are not covered by labour protections. Women, in particular, have seen considerable shifts in the manner in which they seek work, engage with customers/employers, negotiate wages and other protections. My thesis seeks to examine these shifts, in India's domestic work sector, which is highly informal. In the domestic work sector, digital platforms have brought with them systems and processes that seem to exacerbate how women experience the labour market. For example, a popular, nationally present digital platform uses marital status as a way of matching women workers with customers, under the guise of increasing efficiency in matching workers and 'protecting workers' from customer refusal and harassment. This goes to show that a woman's social indicators - age, caste, class, marital status - play a role in the work she is able to engage with. While some studies have begun to understand how these algorithmic biases affect women, there is a gap in our knowledge on the means and extent of this affect, as well as on worker impact. Furthermore, in the informal work sector, the cooperative model has traditionally
shown some success in both organising workers and affording them decent work, decision making power and sustaining livelihoods. The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) Cooperative Federation is an organisation working with women's cooperatives, with the goal of creating and sustaining grassroots owned and led cooperatives. The platform economy has pushed these cooperatives, as well as brought in ideas for new cooperatives, that include platforms in their design. In theory, a worker-owned digital platform would eliminate discriminatory practices, while optimising the use of technologies in this new economy. The viability and sustainability of such platform cooperatives, particularly those owned by women, is yet to be fully determined. The two main research questions, which I seek to examine are: How do digital platforms (in the domestic work sector) inherently embed or codify gendered power-dynamics and hierarchies, and how do workers adapt to or negotiate with these
codifications, vis-a-vis prevailing socio-cultural norms? Are worker-owned platforms, such as cooperatives, a viable and sustainable means of enmeshing tech-enabled solutions with democratic governance? The main research methodology will be qualitative, including various modalities of data collection - key informant interviews, case studies and a critical examination of platform policies. Through these, I seek to centre the voices of women workers. I will also study SEWA Homecare, a cooperative of domestic workers in the state of Gujarat, that has experimented with traditional platforms and also begun designing its own plan for a cooperative platform. Digital platforms hold immense emancipatory potential in terms of promoting the economic participation of women, formalizing and improving conditions in the informal economy, and creating new opportunities in an increasingly stagnant economy that can provide fewer and fewer jobs. However, whether this will happen will be determined by the ongoing struggle to define how the design and applications of digital platforms will evolve in the years to come. The keystake that women workers around the world have in the struggle over this technology's future demands that research quickly draw out the specificities of the experiences