Centre for Internet and Society

A Compilation of Research on the Gig Economy

Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, Sumandro Chattapadhyay — 2020-05-19T08:20:20Z

Over the past year, researchers at CIS have been studying gig economies and gig workers in India. Their work has involved consultative discussions with domestic workers, food delivery workers, taxi drivers, trade union leaders, and government representatives to document the state of gig work in India, and highlight the concerns of gig workers. The imposition of a severe lockdown in India in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 has left gig workers in precarious positions. Without the privilege of social distancing, these workers are having to contend with a drastic reduction in income, while also placing themselves at heightened health risks.

On gig economy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Supported by Feminist Internet Research Network led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

Along with Tandem Research, we spoke to leaders of four unions that represent gig workers across the country about the risks and vulnerabilities that they are having to contend with in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Zothan Mawii (Tandem Research), Ambika Tandon, and Aayush Rathi share key reflections in this essay published on The Wire. (link).
Based on the discussion, a charter of recommendations was prepared with contributions from participants, and was shared with public and private stakeholders. (link)

On domestic workers in the platform economy

Supported by Feminist Internet Research Network led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

We discussed our ongoing research on the platformisation of domestic work in India with domestic workers, union members, and representatives from the Karnataka Labour Department in November 2019. Tasneem Mewa documented the rich discussion from this consultation. (link)

CIS worked with members of the Domestic Workers Rights Union to conduct field research on the lives and challenges of domestic workers in the platform economy. The following essays published on GenderIT capture their experiences of doing this research:

Parijatha G.P. writes about a “gated society management app,” MyGate, and the experiences of surveillance of migrant workers in Bengaluru. (link)
Radha Keerthna writes about the similarity in the conditions of domestic workers in the traditional and platform economy, particularly the precarity and invisibility of labour. (link)
Sumathi, a union leader, reflects on and her experience as an activist-researcher interacting with domestic gig workers through the course of our study. (link)
Zeenathunissa shares the difficulty of speaking to domestic workers in the gig economy, especially when workers undergo constant surveillance by employers and companies. (link)

On economic, algorithmic, and affective vulnerabilities of gig workers

Supported by Azim Premji University

CIS commissioned a set of four field studies of platform workers delivering food and driving taxis for platform companies in Mumbai and New Delhi. The researchers involved wrote a series of essays that were published by Platypus blog of CASTAC:

Anushree Gupta explores women’s presence as workers as well as passengers/customers in the ride hailing platform economy in Mumbai and related concerns of safety and risk mitigation. (link)
Sarah Zia highlights how algorithmic management of work and revenue targets of gig workers impact their everyday lives and plans for the future. (link)
Kinship networks are a critical source of safety and security for workers in the gig economy. Simiran Lalvani writes about the network among transportation workers in Mumbai, also reflecting on implications for those who are excluded. (link)
Noopur Raval and Rajendra Jadhav describe the unregulated and exploitative temporal structures of gig work, and how work-time of gig workers get configured by customer-facing promises of platform companies. (link)
The four researchers, led by Noopur Raval (co-PI for the project, held a roundtable discussion to reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for research on the gig economy and its workers. (link)

The consultants - Noopur Raval, Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia and Simiran Lalvani - involved in this project on mapping digital labour in India’s platform economies (in Mumbai and New Delhi) gathered in Bengaluru on July 19, 2019 to share their preliminary field insights along with reflections on what it meant to do such studies, how they went about studying gig-work, and challenges that arose in their work. Watch the livestream from this discussion here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/a-compilation-of-research-on-the-gig-economy

Announcing Selected Researchers: Welfare, Gender, and Surveillance

sumandro — 2020-02-13T15:04:24Z

We published a Call for Researchers on January 10, 2020, to invite applications from researchers interested in writing a narrative essay that interrogates the modes of surveillance that people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations are put under as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. We received 29 applications from over 10 locations in India in response to the call, and are truly overwhelmed by and grateful for this interest and support. We eventually selected applications by 3 researchers that we felt aligned best with the specific objectives of the project. Please find below brief profile notes of the selected researchers.

Call for Researchers: URL

Kaushal Bodwal

Kaushal is persuing his MPhil in Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He completed his Master's in Sociology at Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University after getting a BSc honors degree in Biomedical Sciences from Delhi University. He is one of the founding members of Hasratein: a queer collective, New Delhi. He has been an active spokesperson for Queer and Trans Rights in India and have been on a number of panel discussion on Trans Act 2019 in various campuses. He has also delivered a lecture series on Colonialism and Medicine in Ambedkar University, Kashmiri Gate, Delhi. His areas of interest are Sociology of medicine, gender and medicine, sexuality, religion and biomedical science, intersex studies.

Queerness as disease – a continuing narrative in 21st century India, Kafila, 27 August 2019

What it means to be queer under a regime bent on remaking India on its own ideological terms, Firstpost, 17 January 2020

Rosamma Thomas

Rosamma has worked both as a reporter and as an editor of news reports with newspapers. She currently writes reports for NGOs while also undertaking freelance reporting assignments. She is based in Pune.

India's mining state steps up fight to rein in killer silicosis, The Times of India, 29 June 2016

Doctor may have found early marker for silicosis, but who will fund him?, Newsclick, 18 July 2019

Asbestos poisoning: Raghunath Manwar’s fight for safer work conditions, Newsclick, 9 January 2020

Shreya Ila Anasuya

Shreya is a writer, editor, journalist and performance artist currently based in Calcutta. Her fiction explores the places where myth, memory, history and the performing arts meet. As a journalist, her work explores gender, sexuality, politics, culture and history. She has been published in The Wire, Caravan, Scroll, Mint Lounge, Deep Dives, GenderIT, Helter Skelter, and many more. She is the editor of the digital publication Skin Stories, housed at the non-profit Point of View. She is the writer and narrator of ‘Gul - a story in text, song and dance’ which has been performed in several cities in India. She was a Felix Scholar at SOAS, University of London, from where she has an MA in Anthropology. For a full portfolio, please click here or visit her website.

This project is led by Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay at the Centre for Internet and Society, and is supported by a grant from Privacy International.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/announcing-selected-researchers-welfare-gender-and-surveillance

Roundtable on India’s Gig-work Economy

Noopur Raval, Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, and Simiran Lalvani — 2020-05-19T06:36:34Z

Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This roundtable discussion marks the end of our series on 'India’s Gig-work Economy' published by the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). In this discussion, the researchers reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for research on the topic. Listen to the audio track below or read the transcript for the full discussion.

Originally published by the Platypus blog of CASTAC on September 5, 2019.

Full transcript of the roundtable in English.

Excerpts from the roundtable

Part 1: On continuities between traditional and newer forms of work in cab-driving

Anushree (researcher, taxi-driving in Mumbai): “Something that came out during field work was the flow of workers from traditional services to app-based services which kind of happened in phases and all these platforms have played a different function in the history of this. While the radio taxis were more important in teaching workers to become professionals in the service economy the new platforms have given them a larger customer base and hired access to audience.”

Sarah (researcher, taxi-driving in Delhi): “Prior to Ola and Uber there were radio cabs, but they were not the same phenomenon obviously. They used to work in specific pockets better, such as the airport route.”

Part 2: Regulation of platform companies and platform-work

The State’s response to disruptive technologies in India has always accounted for worker groups as electoral constituents as well. This means that there are no neat divisions between older black and yellow cabs and the newer ride-hailing app-based cabs. To pacify the threatened black and yellow cab drivers, they were accorded a special category on hailing apps as well:

Anushree: So there were a lot of issues around the emergence of the app-based platforms and services and how they were disrupting the existing arrangements so in a bid to pacify the yellow and black cab drivers who are already operating in the city, these platform companies decided to go ahead and provide access to traditional taxi services as well. But also the related development that happened there is at the Maharashtra state government also provided another app to the black and yellow Cab drivers and as far as I found out during my fieldwork there hasn’t been any resolution on that front and most black and yellow cab drivers also use the State government made app but they also log into apps and every time I tried to book a black and yellow cab using Ola and Uber I could not get one.

Part 3: On motivations and perceptions of gig-work

Simiran (researcher, food-delivery work in Mumbai): “So, I felt that these non app-based workers had difficulty joining apps because they lack domicile proof to prove they live in the city. There is also a perception that one needs to be English speaking. I am not implying that app-based workers have no rural roots or are all English speaking or educated but this is the perception that was held by non-app workers that was interesting.”

Rajendra (researcher, food-delivery work in Delhi): “In case of the food-delivery workers in Delhi, they push them to deliver orders on time. This pressure makes them violate traffic rules, they ride on pavements, they break traffic signals. This also disrupts the social understanding of how to move in the city.”

Part 4: On studying the gig-economy in India: how did you recruit, why?

Noopur: Why not order and recruit because so many people seem to be taking this pathway to approach gig-economy workers?

Simiran: “…One thing is that I have never ordered food online so I wanted to keep it a bit blind that way but also the other thing is that I did not want my first interaction with the worker to be as a consumer or in a consumer-provider relationship. So, I was searching on Youtube, looking for city names and looking for search terms such as strikes or protests. Looking for videos about these things and their views on the companies…This was very interesting because there were also people from non-metro cities, from small towns doing this work who were also very eager to speak to me. They were expressive already and wanting to speak…”

Anushree: “Apart from them fleet owners and union members were very eager to talk to us. They saw the study as a way to put their voice out. I had to establish my identity as well as a researcher. I used Telegram and facebook groups extensively…I think I relied on Telegram the most. It was also surprising that such a diverse set of people were on that platform. I had never used Telegram before this project but the comfort levels of all the people using it was really surprising. Drivers in the union members group was sort of surprising to me, they were posting images from the road, they were posting audio notes, they were moderating conversations in the group. Telegram was my major source of responses and I also got to know what was happening on the ground.”

Sarah: “So, when you identify as a researcher and ask them these questions there is a certain expectation of allyship. So, I started asking them what they think is a good customer. That was a good entry point to assuring them that I was on their side. Some of them were still very cautious. We were talking about things like drunk women and they would be quick to tell me that not all women are bad. Or not all customers are bad. But discussing customers and their behavior was generally a good way to connect with them…”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable

Call for Researchers: Welfare, Gender, and Surveillance

ambika — 2020-02-13T15:05:37Z

We are inviting applications for two researchers. Each researcher is expected to write a narrative essay that interrogates the modes of surveillance that people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations are put under as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. The researchers are expected to undertake field research in the location they are based in, and reflect on lived experiences gathered through field research as well as their own experiences of doing field research. Please read the sections below for more details about the work involved, the timeline for the same, and the application process for this call.

Call for Researchers: Download (PDF)

Description of the Work

Each researcher is expected to author a narrative essay that presents and reflects on lived experiences of people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. We expect the essay to contribute to a larger body of knowledge around the increasing focus on data-driven initiatives for public health provision in the country and elsewhere. Accordingly, the researcher may respond to any one or more than one of the following questions, within the context of the geographical focus as specified by the researcher:

What are the modes of surveillance, especially in terms of generation and exploitation of digital data, experienced by people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations in India, as they avail of sexual and reproductive healthcare?
How are the lived experiences of underserved populations, such as people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations, shaped by gendered surveillance while accessing sexual and reproductive services?
What are the modes of governance and gender ideologies that have mediated the increasing datafication of such provision?

We expect the researchers to draw on a) the Indian Supreme Court’s framing of privacy in India, as a fundamental right, and its implications; and b) apply and/or build on feminist conceptualisations of privacy. Further, we expect the researchers to respond to the uncertain landscape of legal rights accessible to people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations, especially in the current context shaped by The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.

The researchers will undertake field research in locations of their choice, conduct interviews and discussions with people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations seeking such services, and conduct formal and informal interviews with officials and personnel associated with public and private sector agencies involved in the provision of SRH services.

Eligibility and Application Process

We specifically encourage people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations to submit their applications for this call for researchers.

We are seeking applications from individuals who:

Are based in the place where field study is to be undertaken, for the duration of the study;
Are fluent in the main regional language(s) spoken in the city where the study will be conducted, and in English (especially written);
Preferably have a postgraduate degree (current students should also apply) in social or technical sciences, journalism, or legal studies (undergraduate degree-holders with research or work experience should also apply); and
Have previous research and writing experiences on issues at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health, gender justice and women’s rights, and health informatics or digital public health.

Please send the following documents (in text or PDF formats) to raw@cis-india.org by Friday, January 24 to apply for the researcher positions:

Brief CV with relevant academic and professional information;
Two samples of academic/professional (published/unpublished) writing by the applicant; and
A brief research proposal (around 500 words) that should specify the scope (geographical and conceptual), research questions, and motivation of the essay to be authored by the applicant.

All applicants will be informed of the selection decisions by Friday, January 31.

Timeline of the Work

February 3-7 CIS research team will have a call with each researcher to plan out the work to be undertaken by them

February - March Researchers are to undertake field research, as proposed by the researchers and discussed with the CIS research team

March 27 Researchers are to submit a full draft essay (around 3,000 words)

March 30 - April 3 CIS research team will have call with each researcher to discuss the shared draft essays and make plans towards their finalisation

May 15 Researchers are to submit the final essay (around 5,000 words, without footnotes and references)

As part of this project, CIS will organise two discussion events in Bengaluru and New Delhi during April-June (tentatively). Event dates are to be decided in conversation with the researchers, and they will be invited to present their works in the same.

Remuneration

Each researcher will be paid a remuneration of Rs. 1,00,000 (inclusive of taxes) over two equal installments: first on signing of the agreement in February 2020, and second on submission of the final essay in May 2020.

We will also reimburse local travel expenses of each researcher upto Rs. 10,000, and translations and transcriptions expense (if any) incurred by each researcher upto Rs. 10,000. These reimbursements will be made on the basis of expense invoices shared by the researcher.

Description of the Project

Previous research conducted by CIS on the subject of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India observes that there is a complex web of surveillance, or ‘dataveillance’, around each patient as they avail of SRH services from the state. In this current project, we are aiming to map the ecosystem of surveillance around SRH services as their provision becomes increasingly ‘data-driven’, and explore its implications for patients and beneficiaries.

Through this project, we are interested in documenting the roles played by both the public and the private sector actors in this ecosystem of health surveillance. We understand the role of private sector actors as central to state provision of sexual and reproductive health services, especially through the institutionalisation of data-driven health insurance models, as well as through extensive privatisation of public health services. By studying semi-private, private, and public medical establishments including hospitals, primary/community health centres and clinics, we aim to develop a comparative analysis of surveillance ecosystems across the three establishment types.

This project is led by Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay at the Centre for Internet and Society, and is supported by a grant from Privacy International.

Indicative Reading List

We are sharing below a short and indicative list of readings that may be useful for potential applicants.

Aayush Rathi, Is India's Digital Health System Foolproof? (2019)

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention? (2019)

Ambika Tandon, Feminist Methodology in Technology Research: A Literature Review (2018)

Ambika Tandon, Big Data and Reproductive Health in India: A Case Study of the Mother and Child Tracking System (2019)

Anja Kovacs, Reading Surveillance through a Gendered Lens: Some Theory (2017)

Lindsay Weinberg, Rethinking Privacy: A Feminist Approach to Privacy Rights after Snowden (2017)

Nicole Shephard, Big Data and Sexual Surveillance (2016)

Sadaf Khan, Data Bleeding Everywhere: A Story of Period Trackers (2019)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/jobs/researchers-welfare-gender-surveillance-call

Stakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment | UN Women + SEWA

Admin — 2020-04-07T13:14:40Z

On December 06, 2019, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi participated in a "Stakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment: Addressing Barriers and Enhancing Opportunities for Women in Informal Economy and in Agriculture".

Aayush and Ambika participated upon the invite of UN Women and Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), who were the organisers of the consultation. The consultation was from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm on 6th December, 2019 at the Claridges Hotel, New Delhi.

Former UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki Moon established the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (UNHLP-WEE) to make action oriented recommendations on how to improve economic outcomes for women in the context of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.The panel submitted its final report to the UN Secretary General in 2017, identifying seven drivers for women’s economic empowerment and laying out concrete actions for accelerating progress towards women’s full and equal economic participation.

In February 2019, SEWA Bharat and UN Women had organized a National consultation on “Taking Action Towards Transformative Change for Women in the Informal Sector in India” in India with civil society organizations, researchers, philanthropists and international organizations to prioritize action on the drivers for women’s economic empowerment in the context of India. Four drivers, amongst seven, were prioritized through the consultative process. Driver 4 on Building Assets – Digital, Financial and Property is one of the critical drivers for Women’s Economic Empowerment in India and has been prioritized for the first stakeholder consultation in the roadmap development process to contextualize the recommendation of HLP in the Indian context.

The primary objectives, then, of this consultation were as follows:

To provide a platform for sharing of experiences in research, programming and policy to ensure digital assets for women in the informal economy and in agriculture;
To identify proven and promising practices in this regard;
To develop an action agenda including identification of areas for research, programming and policy to reduce the gender digital divide.

*Detailed agenda*

Download the detailed agenda here.

*Participation*

At the consultation, Aayush contributed to the breakout group on DBT while Ambika contributed to the one on employment. The consultation led to rich discussions as on-ground experiences and learning from implementation programs were shared widely to devise a roadmap and policy recommendations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stakeholder-consultation-on-digital-assets-for-women2019s-economic-empowerment-un-women-sewa

Project on Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism with City University

ambika — 2019-12-02T09:38:21Z

CIS is a partner on the project 'Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism in the Digital Age'. The project is lead by Dr. Carolina Matos, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Media in the Department of Sociology at City University.

It is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund. Ambika Tandon, Policy Officer at CIS, conducted fieldwork for the project in May and June 2019 as a research assistant.

The goal of the project is to advance research on how new communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to create awareness of gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights. It aims to assess how the use of technologies, by women's groups and feminist NGOs can empower women in developing countries to advance citizen and human rights with the intent to influence policy at the global and local level. More information on the preliminary findings of the project can be found in the downloadable presentation."

You may find Dr. Carolina Matos's presentation here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/project-on-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-with-city-university

Comments to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report on Gender and Privacy

Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Pallavi Bedi — 2019-12-30T17:40:20Z

This submission to UNHRC presents a response by researchers at the CIS to ‘gender issues arising in the digital era and their impacts on women, men and individuals of diverse sexual orientations gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics’. It was prepared by Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, and Pallavi Bedi in response to a report of consultation by a thematic taskforce established by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy on ‘Privacy and Personality’ (hereafter, HRC Gender Report).

HRC Gender Report - Consultation version: Read (PDF)

Submitted comments: Read (PDF)

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India, is an 11-year old non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and regulatory practices around internet, technology, and society in India,and elsewhere. Current focus areas include cybersecurity, privacy, freedom of speech, labour and artificial intelligence. CIS has been taking efforts to mainstream gender across its programmes, as well as develop specifically gender-focused research using a feminist approach.

CIS appreciates the efforts of Dr. Elizabeth Coombs, Chair, Thematic Action Stream Taskforce on “A better understanding of privacy”, and those of Professor Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy. We are also grateful for the opportunity to put forth our views and comment on the HRC Gender Report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-unhrc-report-on-gender-and-privacy

Doing Standpoint Theory

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2019-12-06T04:59:35Z

Cross-posted from GenderIT, September 1, 2019

Image description: Three speech bubbles on different textures. Artist: Catalina Alzate

Feminist research methodology has evolved from different epistemologies, with several different schools of thought. Some of the more popular ones are feminist standpoint theory, feminist empiricism, and feminist relativism. Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power [2]. Feminist empiricism does not eschew traditional modes of knowledge production, but emphasises diversity of research participants for feminist (and therefore also rigorous) knowledge production [3]. Relativists have critiqued standpoint theory for its tendency to essentialise the experience of marginalised groups, and subsume them into one homogenous voice to achieve the goal of ‘emancipatory’ research [4]. Relativists instead focus on multiple standpoints, which could be Dalit women, lesbian women, or women with disabilities [5]. We will be discussing the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.

Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power.

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, the Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking research on the digital mediation of domestic and care work in India. The project aims to assess shifts in the sector, including conditions of work, brought on by the entry of digital platforms. Our starting point for designing a methodology for the research was standpoint theory, which we thought to be the best fit as the goal of the project was to disrupt dominant narratives of women’s labour in relation to platformisation. In the context of dalit feminis, Rege warns that standpoint research risks producing a narrow frame of identity politics, although it is critical to pay attention to lived experience and the “naming of difference” between dalit women and savarna women [6]. She asserts that neither ‘women’ nor ‘dalit women’ is a homogenous category. While feminist researchers from outside these categories cannot claim to “speak for” those within, they can “reinvent” themselves as dalit feminists and ally themselves with their politics.

In order to address this risk of appropriating the voices of domestic workers (“speaking for”), we chose to directly work with a domestic workers’ union in Bengaluru called Stree Jagruti Smiti. Bengaluru is one of the two cities we are conducting research in (the other being Delhi, with very few registered unions). This is meant to radically destabilise power hierarchies and material relations within the research process, as benefits of participatory research tend to accumulate with the researchers rather than participants [7].

Along with amplifying the voices of workers, a central objective of our project is to question the techno-solutionism that has accompanied the entry of digital platforms into the domestic work sector, which is unorganised and unregulated. To do so, we included companies and state labour departments as participants whose standpoint is to be interrogated. By juxtaposing the standpoints of stakeholders that have differential access to power and resources, the researcher is able to surface various conflicts and intersections in dominant and alternative narratives. This form of research also brings with it unique challenges, as researchers could find themselves mediating between the different stakeholders, while constantly choosing to privilege the standpoint of the least powerful - in this case the workers. Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors. This can also be done by ensuring that workers have agency to shape the agenda of researchers, thereby producing research which is instrumental in supporting grassroots campaigns and movements.

Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors.

Feminist participatory research itself, despite its many promises, is not a linear pathway to empowerment for participants [8]. At the very outset of the project, we were constantly asked the question by domestic workers and unions – why should we participate in this project? Researchers, in their experience, acquire information from the community throughout the process of data collection by positioning themselves as allies. However, as all such engagements are bound to limited timelines and budgets, researchers are then often absent at critical junctures where the community may need external support. We were also told that all too often, the output of the research itself does not make its way back to the participants, making it a one-way process of knowledge extraction. Being mindful of these experiences, we have integrated a feedback loop into our research design, which will allow us to design outputs that are accessible and useful to collectives of domestic workers.

Not only domestic workers and their organisations, many corporations operating these online portals and platforms often questioned the benefits of participating in the project. However, the manner of articulation differed. While attempting to reject the hierarchical nature of the researcher/participant relationship, we increasingly became aware that the underlying power equation was not a monolith. Rather, it varied across stakeholder groups and was explicitly contingent on the socially constructed positionalities already existing outside of the space of the interview. Companies, governments and workers all exemplified varying degrees of engagement with, knowledge of, and contributions to research. Interviews with workers and unions, and even some bootstrapped (i.e. without much external funding) , socially-minded companies, were often cathartic with an expectation of some benefits in return for opening themselves up to researchers. This was quite different for governments and larger companies, as conversations typically adhered to the patriarchal and classed notions of professionalism in sanitised, formal spaces [9] and the strict dichotomy between public and personal spaces. Their contribution seemingly required lesser affective engagement from the interviewee, thereby resulting in lesser investment in the outcome of the research itself.

The cathartic nature of interviews also speak to the impossibility of the distanced, Platonic, school of research. We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought. Workers and representatives from platform companies alike would question our motivations with the research and challenge us by inquiring about the benefits accruing to us. Again, both set of stakeholders would often ask differently about how other platforms were; workers already registered on a platform would wonder if another platform would be ‘better’ and representatives of platform companies would be curious about competition. This is perhaps a consequence of attempting to design a study that is of use and of interest to the workers we have been reaching out to [10]. At times, we found ourselves at a place in the conversation where we were compelled to respond to political positions for the conversation to continue. There were interviews where notions of caste hierarchies (within oppressed classes) as a justification/complaint for engaging/having to engage in certain tasks would surface. Despite being beholden to a feminist consciousness that disregards the idea of the interviewer as neutral, we often found ourselves only hesitantly forthcoming. At times, it was to keep the interview broadly focused around the research subject, at others it was due to our own ignorance about the research artefact (in this instance, platforms mediating domestic work services). This underscores the challenges of seeing the interview as a value ridden space, where the contradictions between the interview as a data collection method and as a consciousness raising emerged - how could we share information about the artefact we were in the process of collecting data about?

We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought.

The fostering of ‘rapport’ [11] has made its may into method, almost unknowingly. Often, respondents across stakeholder groups started from an initial place of hesitation, sometimes even suspicion. Several structural issues could be at work here - our inability in being able to accurately describe research itself, the class differences and at times, ideological ones as well. While with most participants, rapport was eventually established, its establishment was a laboured process. Especially given that we were using one-off, in-depth interviews as our method, securing an interview was contingent on the establishment of rapport. This isn’t to suggest that feminist research mandatorily requires the ‘doing of rapport’ [12], but that when it does, it’s a fortunate outcome and that feminist researchers engage with it more critically.

Building rapport creates an impression of having minimised the exploitation of the participant, however the underlying politics and pressures of building rapport need to be interrogated. Rapport, like research itself, is at times a performance; rapport is often not naturally occuring. Rather, rapport may also be built to conceal the very structural factors preventing it. For instance, during instances of ideological differences during the interview, we were at times complicit through our silence. This may have been to further a certain notion of ‘objectivity’ itself whereby the building and maintenance of rapport is essential to surfacing a participant’s real views. This then raises the questions: What are the ethical questions that the suppression of certain viewpoints and reactions pose? How does the building, maintenance and continuance of rapport inform the research findings? Rapport, then, comes in all shapes and sizes and its manifold forms implicate the research process differently. Another critical question to be addressed is - why does some rapport take less work than others? With platform companies, building rapport came by easier than it did with workers both on and off platforms. If understood as removing degrees of distance between the researcher and participants, several factors could play into the effort required to build rapport. For instance, language was a critical determinant of the ease of relationship-building. Being more fluent in English than in colloquial Hindi enabled clearer articulation of the research. Further, familiarity with the research process was, as expected, mediated along class lines. This influenced the manner in which we articulated research outcomes and objectives to workers with complete unfamiliarity with the meaning of research. Among workers, this unfamiliarity often resulted in distrust, which required the underlying politics of the research to be more critically articulated.

By and large, the feminist engagement with research methods has been quite successful in its resistance and transformation of traditional forms. Since Oakley’s conception of the interview as a deeply subjective space [13] and Harding’s dialectical conception of masculinist science through its history [14], the application of feminist critical theory has increasingly subverted assumptions around the averseness of research to political motivations. At the same time, it has made knowledge-production occur in a more equitable space. It is in this context that standpoint theory has had wide purchase, but challenges persist in its application. As the foregoing discussion outlines, we have been able to achieve some of the goals of feminist standpoint research while missing out on others. We also found the ‘multiple standpoints’ approach of relativists to be useful in a project involving multiple stakeholders - thereby also avoiding the risk of essentialisation of the identities of domestic workers. However, unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses. Through this hybrid theoretical framework, we are seeking to make knowledge production more equitable. At the same time, the discussion around rapport shows that this may nevertheless happen in a limited fashion. Feminist research may never be fully non-extractive. The reflexivity exercised and choices made during the course of the research are key.

Unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses.

Endnotes

[1] The names of the authors are in alphabetical order.

[2] Harding, S. (2003) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, Routledge.

[3] M. Wickramasinghe, Feminist Research Methodology: Making meaning out of meaning-making, Zubaan, 2014

[4] Pease, D. (2000) Researching profeminist men's narratives: participatory methodologies in a postmodern frame. In B. Fawcett, D. Featherstone, J. Fook ll)'ld A. Rossiter (eds) Restarching and Practising in Social Work: Postmodern Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge).

[5] Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking Out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

[6] Rege, S. 1998. ” Dalit Women Talk Differently: A critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No.44, pp 39-48.

[7] Heeks, R. and Shekhar, S. (2018) An Applied Data Justice Framework: Analysing Datafication and Marginalised Communities in Cities of the Global South. Working Paper Series, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester.

[8] Stone, E. and Priestley, M. (1996) Parasites, pawn and partners: disability research and the role of nondisabled researchers. British Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 699-716.

[9] Evans, L. (2010). Professionalism, professionality and the development of education professionals. Br. J. Educ. Stud. 56, 20–38. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00392.x

[10] Webb C. Feminist methodology in nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 1984 May;9(3):249-56.

[11] Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qual. Res. 15, 219–234. doi:10.1177/1468794112468475; Pitts, M. J., and Miller-Day, M. (2007). Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qual. Res. 7, 177–201. doi:10.1177/1468794107071409

[12] Dunscombe, J., and Jessop, J. (2002). “Doing rapport, and the ethics of ’faking friendship’,” in Ethics in Qualitative Research, eds T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner, and J. Jessop (London: SAGE), 108–121.

[13] Oakley, A. (1981). “Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?” in Doing Feminist Research, ed. H. Roberts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 30–61.

[14] Harding, S. (1986). The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/doing-standpoint-theory

Doing Standpoint Theory

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2019-09-19T14:22:48Z

The article by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi was published by GenderIT.org on September 1, 2019.

Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power2. Feminist empiricism does not eschew traditional modes of knowledge production, but emphasises diversity of research participants for feminist (and therefore also rigorous) knowledge production3. Relativists have critiqued standpoint theory for its tendency to essentialise the experience of marginalised groups, and subsume them into one homogenous voice to achieve the goal of ‘emancipatory’ research4. Relativists instead focus on multiple standpoints, which could be Dalit women, lesbian women, or women with disabilities5. We will be discussing the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, the Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking research on the digital mediation of domestic and care work in India. The project aims to assess shifts in the sector, including conditions of work, brought on by the entry of digital platforms. Our starting point for designing a methodology for the research was standpoint theory, which we thought to be the best fit as the goal of the project was to disrupt dominant narratives of women’s labour in relation to platformisation. In the context of dalit feminis, Rege warns that standpoint research risks producing a narrow frame of identity politics, although it is critical to pay attention to lived experience and the “naming of difference” between dalit women and savarna women6. She asserts that neither ‘women’ nor ‘dalit women’ is a homogenous category. While feminist researchers from outside these categories cannot claim to “speak for” those within, they can “reinvent” themselves as dalit feminists and ally themselves with their politics.

Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors.

Feminist participatory research itself, despite its many promises, is not a linear pathway to empowerment for participants8. At the very outset of the project, we were constantly asked the question by domestic workers and unions – why should we participate in this project? Researchers, in their experience, acquire information from the community throughout the process of data collection by positioning themselves as allies. However, as all such engagements are bound to limited timelines and budgets, researchers are then often absent at critical junctures where the community may need external support. We were also told that all too often, the output of the research itself does not make its way back to the participants, making it a one-way process of knowledge extraction. Being mindful of these experiences, we have integrated a feedback loop into our research design, which will allow us to design outputs that are accessible and useful to collectives of domestic workers.

Not only domestic workers and their organisations, many corporations operating these online portals and platforms often questioned the benefits of participating in the project. However, the manner of articulation differed. While attempting to reject the hierarchical nature of the researcher/participant relationship, we increasingly became aware that the underlying power equation was not a monolith. Rather, it varied across stakeholder groups and was explicitly contingent on the socially constructed positionalities already existing outside of the space of the interview. Companies, governments and workers all exemplified varying degrees of engagement with, knowledge of, and contributions to research. Interviews with workers and unions, and even some bootstrapped (i.e. without much external funding) , socially-minded companies, were often cathartic with an expectation of some benefits in return for opening themselves up to researchers. This was quite different for governments and larger companies, as conversations typically adhered to the patriarchal and classed notions of professionalism in sanitised, formal spaces9 and the strict dichotomy between public and personal spaces. Their contribution seemingly required lesser affective engagement from the interviewee, thereby resulting in lesser investment in the outcome of the research itself.

The cathartic nature of interviews also speak to the impossibility of the distanced, Platonic, school of research. We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought. Workers and representatives from platform companies alike would question our motivations with the research and challenge us by inquiring about the benefits accruing to us. Again, both set of stakeholders would often ask differently about how other platforms were; workers already registered on a platform would wonder if another platform would be ‘better’ and representatives of platform companies would be curious about competition. This is perhaps a consequence of attempting to design a study that is of use and of interest to the workers we have been reaching out to.10 At times, we found ourselves at a place in the conversation where we were compelled to respond to political positions for the conversation to continue. There were interviews where notions of caste hierarchies (within oppressed classes) as a justification/complaint for engaging/having to engage in certain tasks would surface. Despite being beholden to a feminist consciousness that disregards the idea of the interviewer as neutral, we often found ourselves only hesitantly forthcoming. At times, it was to keep the interview broadly focused around the research subject, at others it was due to our own ignorance about the research artefact (in this instance, platforms mediating domestic work services). This underscores the challenges of seeing the interview as a value ridden space, where the contradictions between the interview as a data collection method and as a consciousness raising emerged - how could we share information about the artefact we were in the process of collecting data about?

We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought.

The fostering of ‘rapport’11 has made its may into method, almost unknowingly. Often, respondents across stakeholder groups started from an initial place of hesitation, sometimes even suspicion. Several structural issues could be at work here - our inability in being able to accurately describe research itself, the class differences and at times, ideological ones as well. While with most participants, rapport was eventually established, its establishment was a laboured process. Especially given that we were using one-off, in-depth interviews as our method, securing an interview was contingent on the establishment of rapport. This isn’t to suggest that feminist research mandatorily requires the ‘doing of rapport’12, but that when it does, it’s a fortunate outcome and that feminist researchers engage with it more critically.

By and large, the feminist engagement with research methods has been quite successful in its resistance and transformation of traditional forms. Since Oakley’s conception of the interview as a deeply subjective space13 and Harding’s dialectical conception of masculinist science through its history14, the application of feminist critical theory has increasingly subverted assumptions around the averseness of research to political motivations. At the same time, it has made knowledge-production occur in a more equitable space. It is in this context that standpoint theory has had wide purchase, but challenges persist in its application. As the foregoing discussion outlines, we have been able to achieve some of the goals of feminist standpoint research while missing out on others. We also found the ‘multiple standpoints’ approach of relativists to be useful in a project involving multiple stakeholders - thereby also avoiding the risk of essentialisation of the identities of domestic workers. However, unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses. Through this hybrid theoretical framework, we are seeking to make knowledge production more equitable. At the same time, the discussion around rapport shows that this may nevertheless happen in a limited fashion. Feminist research may never be fully non-extractive. The reflexivity exercised and choices made during the course of the research are key.

Unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses.

The names of the authors are in alphabetical order.

Harding, S. (2003) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, Routledge.

M. Wickramasinghe, Feminist Research Methodology: Making meaning out of meaning-making, Zubaan, 2014

Pease, D. (2000) Researching profeminist men's narratives: participatory methodologies in a postmodern frame. In B. Fawcett, D. Featherstone, J. Fook ll)'ld A. Rossiter (eds) Restarching and Practising in Social Work: Postmodern Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge).

Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking Out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

Rege, S. 1998. ” Dalit Women Talk Differently: A critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No.44, pp 39-48.

Heeks, R. and Shekhar, S. (2018) An Applied Data Justice Framework: Analysing Datafication and Marginalised Communities in Cities of the Global South. Working Paper Series, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester.

Stone, E. and Priestley, M. (1996) Parasites, pawn and partners: disability research and the role of nondisabled researchers. British Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 699-716.

Evans, L. (2010). Professionalism, professionality and the development of education professionals. Br. J. Educ. Stud. 56, 20–38. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00392.x

Webb C. Feminist methodology in nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 1984 May;9(3):249-56.

Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qual. Res. 15, 219–234. doi:10.1177/1468794112468475; Pitts, M. J., and Miller-Day, M. (2007). Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qual. Res. 7, 177–201. doi:10.1177/1468794107071409

Dunscombe, J., and Jessop, J. (2002). “Doing rapport, and the ethics of ’faking friendship’,” in Ethics in Qualitative Research, eds T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner, and J. Jessop (London: SAGE), 108–121.

Oakley, A. (1981). “Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?” in Doing Feminist Research, ed. H. Roberts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 30–61.

Harding, S. (1986). The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-gender-it-september-1-2019-doing-standpoint-theory

Lecture at International Summer School, Delhi

Admin — 2019-07-22T01:11:00Z

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, on July 12, 2019, delivered a lecture at the International Summer School, Delhi.

The ISS is in its 6th year now, and is convened annually as a six week academic program. The ISS is held in affiliation with the Department of Political Science at Jamia Millia Islamia - A Central University (JMI) and with regular support from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) over the years.

The lecture formed a part of the Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work course module at this year's edition. The speakers focused specifically on placing an intersectional lens to drive home the point that there will be not one future of work, but multiple. And how it is that we can begin to interrogate the various competing narratives that are being propagated. Ambika and Aayush also focused on how the present gendered ordering of the labour market stands to be reproduced in the various shapes work will take going forward.

The presentation can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/lecture-at-international-summer-school-delhi

Presentation to Amnesty International on researching the Future of Work

Admin — 2019-07-21T15:23:52Z

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon made a presentation to Amnesty International on July 18, 2019.

Amnesty International is in the midst of designing its next big global strategy and were seeking inputs to 5 key questions (attached here). They were soliciting provocations to make sure that future of work issues are not left out of their vision and future strategy. Also invited was Will Stronge, director of Autonomy, a think tank in the UK. While he spoke about Autonomy's work that looks at future of work as enmeshed with climate change issues, we brought in a global South perspective and also made a case for why looking at gender is crucial, and why there is a need for methodological innovation in the study of the future of work. Click to view the presentation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/presentation-to-amnesty-international-on-researching-the-future-of-work

Workshop on Feminist Information Infrastructure

ambika — 2019-07-09T15:35:24Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) organised a workshop on feminist infrastructure in collaboration with Blank Noise and Sangama, on 29th October, 2018. The purpose of the workshop was to disseminate the findings from a two-month long project being undertaken by researchers at Blank Noise and Sangama, with research support and training from CIS.

A group of five researchers, one from Blank Noise and four from Sangama, presented their research on different aspects of feminist infrastructure. The workshop was attended by a diverse group of participants, including activists, academics, and representatives from civil society organisations and trade unions.

Feminist infrastructure is a broadly conceptualised term referring to infrastructure that is designed by, and keeping in mind the needs of, diverse social groups with different kinds of marginality. In the field of technology, efforts to conceptualise feminist infrastructure have ranged from rethinking basic technological infrastructure, such as feminist spectrum , to community networks and tools for mobilisation . This project aimed to explore the imagination of feminist infrastructure in the context of different marginalities and lived experiences. Rather than limiting intersectionality to the subject of the research, as with most other feminist projects, this project aimed to produce knowledge from the ‘standpoint’ of those with the lived experience of marginalisation.

This report by Ambika Tandon was edited by Gurshabad Grover and designed by Saumyaa Naidu. The full report can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-may-9-2019-workshop-on-feminist-information-infrastructure

Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) Convening Design

Admin — 2019-03-01T01:08:54Z

Ambika Tandon attended a workshop organized by Association for Progressive Communications for grantees of the Feminist Internet Research Network as a panelist on a session on feminist research methods.. The workshop was held from 27 February to 1 March, in Malaysia. Represented from 8 organizations attended the workshop.

Objectives of the convenining

To inaugurate a network of feminist researcher in the field of digital technology for ongoing collaboration, advice and active solidarity.
To start trust building within the network through shared values and plot how it will work and how it will expand.
To facilitate exchange of learnings and capacity building among the network members and other resource persons, in particular.
To facilitate peer-feedback, collaboration and interdisciplinary discussions on research design, methodologies and research plans of the selected projects and other resource persons.
To get feedback on overall FIRN project research methodology/design.
To explore new and innovative methods, as well as get understand key developments and challenges in more established ways of collecting and analysing data in the four areas of the research initiative.

For more information click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design

Imagine a Feminist Internet: Research, Practice and Policy in South Asia

Admin — 2019-02-27T01:52:55Z

Internet Democracy Project and Point of View co-organized a two-day Imagine a Feminist Internet event in Sri Lanka on 22011 and 22 February 2019. Ambika Tandon was a speaker and presented a paper 'Framing Reproductive Health as a Data Problem? Unpacking ‘Dataveillance’ in India' which was co-authored by herself and Aayush Rathi.

The panel also had a presentation by Dr. Anja Kovacs, and was moderated by Eva Blum-Dumontet from Privacy International. Ambika also participated in a committee that drafted a declaration for policymakers based on the presentations at the conference, which is yet to be finalised. The agenda can be seen here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/imagine-a-feminist-internet-research-practice-and-policy-in-south-asia

Unbox Festival 2019: CIS organizes two Workshops

saumyaa — 2019-02-26T01:53:39Z

Centre for Internet & Society organized two workshops at the Unbox Festival 2019, in Bangalore, on 15 and 17 February 2019.

'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?

The first workshop 'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?' was on Feminist Infrastructure Wishlists that was conducted by P.P. Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu on 15 February 2019. The objective of the workshop was to explore what it means to have infrastructure that is feminist. How do we build spaces, networks, and systems that are equal, inclusive, diverse, and accessible? We will also reflect on questions of network configurations, expertise, labour and visibility. For reading material click here.

AI for Good

With a backdrop of AI for social good, we explore existing applications of artificial intelligence, how we interact and engage with this technology on a daily basis. A discussion led by Saumyaa Naidu and Shweta Mohandas invited participants to examine current narratives around AI and imagine how these may transform with time. Questions around how we can build an AI for the future will become the starting point to trace its implications relating to social impact, policy, gender, design, and privacy. For reading materials see AI Now Report 2018, Machine Bias, and Why Do So Many Digital Assistants Have Feminine Names?

For info on Unbox Festival, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unbox-2019-festival