The Macro Frames of Microwork: A Study of Indian Women Workers on AMT in the Post-Pandemic Moment

50 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2021

Date Written: June 1, 2021

Abstract

Digital labor platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) are able to mobilize local patriarchies, exploiting women’s labor to drive global capitalism’s AI ambitions. Our qualitative study, based on interviews with AMT workers, shows that an intertwining of economic necessity and familial validation makes microwork on digital platforms an optimal choice for small-town Indian women from upwardly mobile households in a global digital economy. As a workplace, AMT demands an exacting adherence to the rules of the platform, but enjoys absolute impunity. Women must learn to manage the coercive disciplinarity of the platform, striving to meet its unknowable metrics. Waiting late nights for tasks from US requesters, they must face the exploitative tyranny of an unpredictable wage that may be withdrawn without explanation. With the onset of the pandemic and resultant instabilities in household income, women’s work on AMT becomes non-negotiable to making ends meet, even as its harshness is more acute, with reducing work, falling pay, longer hours, and the risk of suspension. The digital economy thrives on gendered dispossession – not only extracting women's digital labor for profit, but also obscuring the care work they must perform in the ostensible flexibility afforded by platform capitalism. The study, hence, reflects how labor platforms, like AMT, engage in global labor arbitrage, exploiting gendered and racial faultlines in the digital economy. Pointing to the urgent need to address gender and redistributive justice, we propose policy recommendations for the government, multilateral institutions, and digital labor platforms as well as advocacy strategies for trade unions and civil society organizations.

Keywords: digital labour, microwork, pandemic, India, gender

Suggested Citation

Gurumurthy, Anita and Zainab, Khawla and Sanjay, Sadhana, The Macro Frames of Microwork: A Study of Indian Women Workers on AMT in the Post-Pandemic Moment (June 1, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3872428 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3872428

Anita Gurumurthy (Contact Author)

IT for Change ( email )

#393, 17th Main Road, 35th Cross
Jayanagar 4th 'T' Block
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560041
India

Khawla Zainab

IT for Change ( email )

#393, 17th Main Road, 35th Cross
Jayanagar 4th 'T' Block
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560041
India

Sadhana Sanjay

IT for Change ( email )

#393, 17th Main Road, 35th Cross
Jayanagar 4th 'T' Block
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560041
India

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
162
Abstract Views
1,089
Rank
357,538
PlumX Metrics