With and against Platformisation: Men in care professions and the gendered dynamics of the future of work(ers).

Abstract

While several studies examine platformisation and the future of work from a gendered perspective, much of the media coverage and academic scholarship on the platform economy is divided in terms of their focus – (migrant) men involved in the supposedly “masculine” and visible work of construction, driving, and delivery, and the invisible care work performed by women workers and the challenges involved in both. Undoubtedly, the over-representation of women in different kinds of care work prompts such research. However, in India, both men and women from marginalised castes and classes have historically performed care work, such as domestic work and salon work. Based on patchwork ethnography and interviews with male workers in two feminised care professions (cleaning and salon work), this working paper first makes a case for feminisation of platform work beyond the mere presence of women, and then proceeds to explore the material contexts within which male workers enter (platformised and not-platformised) feminised care work, their views on platformisation, their resistance to and co-optation of platform work, and, related to these, the strategies they use to affirm their masculinity.