The Hassle of Housework: Digitalisation and the Commodification of Domestic Labour. Issue 1 (November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huws, Ursula
• Other Names: guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Feminist review. Volume 123:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 8
• Page End: 23
• Publication Date: 2019-11
• Subjects: domestic labour -- housework -- commodification -- digitalisation -- feminist strategy -- decommodification -- platform economy; Feminism -- Periodicals; 305.4205
• DOI: 10.1177/0141778919879725
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0141-7789

Abstract

This article revisits materialist second-wave feminist debates about domestic labour in the context of digitalisation. Using a differentiated typology of labour, it looks at how the tasks involved in housework have undergone dramatic changes through commodification, decommodification and recommodification without fundamentally altering the gender division of labour in social reproduction, drawing on recent research on the use of online platforms to deliver social reproductive labour via the market in a context in which reproductive labour sits at the centre of an intense time squeeze. It reflects on the implications of the commodification of domestic labour for feminist strategy. The author points to the inadequacy in this context of traditional feminist strategies—for the socialisation of domestic labour through public services, wages for housework or labour-saving through technological solutions—concluding that new strategies are needed that address the underlying social relations that perpetuate unequal divisions of labour in contemporary capitalism.