Section 10.2 focuses on the relationship of housework and digital labour. Section 10.3 analyses the relationship of racism, slavery, and digital labour. Section 10.4 generalises the discussion and provides a typology that outlines the commonalities and differences of wage-labour, slave-labour, housework, and users’ digital labour. Section 10.5 draws some conclusions.
10.2 Housework and Digital Labour
The task of this section is to explore commonalities and differences between housework and users’ digital labour. This will be done in two steps: section 10.2.1 revisits the debate on reproductive labour and identifies two basic positions. The first holds that reproductive labour is productive labour, the second that reproductive labour is excluded from productive labour. Especially the first position is relevant in the digital age. Based on this discussion, section 10.2.2 updates debates about reproductive labour by engaging with the notion of digital housework that was introduced by the Marxist-feminist scholar Kylie Jarrett (2016).
10.2.1 The Debate on Housework and Reproductive Labour
Women have historically carried out the dominant part of reproductive labour, such as child-rearing, care, education, cooking, laundry, shopping, cleaning, etc. In contemporary
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Themes