Virtually Absent: The Gendered Histories and Economies of Digital Labour

Digital labour refers to a range of tasks performed by humans on, in relation to or in the aftermath of software and hardware platforms. On-demand logistics services like Uber and Deliveroo, micro-work venues such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, data transactions generated by social media channels and online retail portals devoted to one-click consumption all comprise digital labour. So do the maledominated workplaces of high-tech firms with long hours and oblique Human Resources policies in an era of #MeToo revelations. Digital labour is intrinsically bound to physical space and to hardware, even when it is classified as ‘immaterial’ in nature (Fortunati, 2018). Very few workplaces now exist without dependency on the mobile devices, computer sensors and data servers upon which software operates.