Gender and Social Shaping of Location-based Digital Labour Platforms in Dhaka, Bangladesh

This thesis examines gender and social shaping of location-based digital labour platforms in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Women's limited participation in these platforms often obscures research to meaningfully engage with their experiences on them. This research, therefore, focuses on the lived experiences and narratives of female platform workers.
The thesis combines the key gendered aspects of social shaping of technology, drawing on the works of MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985; 1999) and Williams and Edge (1996), which provide the basis for the conceptual framework. The analysis also engages with the arguments of feminist standpoint theories to prioritise the perspectives and lived experiences of female platform workers.
Methodologically, the thesis adopts a qualitative approach comprising 34 narrative and semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions, each with eight female platform workers. It also incorporates the perspectives of other actors, including male platform workers, representatives from the government and three platform companies, and a development organisation through 11 semi-structured interviews.
The research suggests that existing patriarchal gender norms and relations of Bangladesh largely shape the platforms. However, they cannot be understood simply as either reproducing or reshaping traditional gender relations or norms. Instead of fully accepting or challenging gender norms and relations, female platform workers largely navigate them through a cyborg ontology,incorporating embodiment, accountability, and situated knowledges. In particular, female workers in platforms that offer non-traditional work for women operationalise situated knowledges through strategic willfulness.
Empirically, the thesis generates critical accounts of gendered inequalities as well as broader structural inequalities in platform work in Dhaka. Conceptually, it contributes to the scholarship of gender and platform work by incorporating Haraway’s interpretation of situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988) and cyborg (Haraway, 1991) within the social shaping of technology concepts. This contributes to a discourse of equity in the socio-technical design of the location-based digital labour platforms.