Feminist Approaches to Location-Based Labour Platforms in India.

The rise of the digital platform economy, driven by technological innovation, was expected to be more favourable for women workers due to increased flexibility and autonomy, but the nature of work on these platforms has been found to be often gendered and precarious. This chapter builds a case for examining platform work from a marginal worker’s viewpoint. It establishes a relationship between feminist approaches and informality and discusses how women have always been structurally and socially more vulnerable to external shock, making them doubly marginalised. The authors map the global understanding and literature on location-based platforms and review it within the Indian context while paying close attention to low-income women workers and the socio-cultural and political challenges surrounding them. The workers’ concerns, opportunities and recommendations in relation to the platform architecture and the accompanied algorithmic management are investigated and an argument is made for a feminist approach to the design and development of location-based digital labour platforms.