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

印度劳动力市场的特点是非正规工作安排和非正规工人。这些工人往往没有工作和收入保障、社会保障和粮食保障。他们的生活和生计朝不保夕，往往是穷人中最穷的。在这一部门中，女工由于其社会地位和较弱的谈判能力而更加脆弱。数字工作平台的出现，被称为“零工”或“平台”经济，给工人与雇主的关系带来了重大变化。这些工人与非正规工人一样，不受劳动保护。特别是妇女，她们在寻找工作、与客户/雇主接触、谈判工资和其他保护的方式方面发生了相当大的变化。我的论文旨在研究这些变化，在印度的国内工作部门，这是高度非正式的。在家政工作领域，数字平台带来的系统和流程似乎加剧了妇女在劳动力市场的体验。例如，一个流行的、全国性的数字平台利用婚姻状况作为女性员工与客户匹配的一种方式，其幌子是提高匹配员工的效率，并“保护员工”免受客户拒绝和骚扰。这表明，妇女的社会指标-年龄、种姓、阶级、婚姻状况-在她能够从事的工作中发挥作用。虽然一些研究已经开始了解这些算法偏见如何影响女性，但我们对这种影响的方式和程度以及对工人的影响的了解还存在差距。此外，在非正规工作部门，合作社模式传统上在组织工人和为他们提供体面工作、决策权和维持生计方面取得了一些成功。自营职业妇女协会合作社联合会是一个与妇女合作社合作的组织，其目标是创建和维持基层拥有和领导的合作社。平台经济推动了这些合作社的发展，也带来了新合作社的想法，这些想法在设计中包括平台。从理论上讲，工人拥有的数字平台将消除歧视性做法，同时优化新经济中技术的使用。这种平台合作社，特别是妇女拥有的平台合作社的可行性和可持续性尚待充分确定。我试图研究的两个主要研究问题是：数字平台（在家政工作部门）如何内在地嵌入或编纂性别权力动态和等级制度，以及工人如何适应或协商这些修改，相对于普遍的社会文化规范？工人拥有的平台，如合作社，是否是将技术支持的解决方案与民主治理相结合的可行和可持续的手段？主要的研究方法将是定性的，包括各种数据收集方式-主要的知情人访谈、案例研究和对平台政策的批判性审查。通过这些活动，我力求集中妇女工人的声音。我还将研究SEWA Homecare，这是古吉拉特邦的一家家政工人合作社，它已经尝试了传统平台，并开始设计自己的合作平台计划。数字平台具有巨大的解放潜力，可以促进妇女的经济参与，使非正规经济正规化并改善其条件，并在就业机会越来越少的日益停滞的经济中创造新的机会。然而，这是否会发生将取决于持续的斗争，以确定数字平台的设计和应用将如何在未来几年内发展。世界各地的女性工作者在这项技术的未来斗争中所拥有的关键利益要求研究迅速得出这些经验的特殊性

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 traditionallyshown 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 thesecodifications, 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