The Future of Digital Work: The Challenge of Inequality

I

Digitalisation plays a key role in the way we live our lives and is transforming what it means to work. From new ways of restructuring existing work including an increasing ability to work from virtually anywhere, to collaborating across geographical regions. At the same time, job-matching sites are changing and expanding the way individuals look for work and how companies identify and recruit talent. Independent workers are increasingly choosing to offer their services on digital platforms challenging conventional ideas about how and where work is undertaken. Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are ushering a new age of digitalisation and automation as machines match or outperform human performance in a range of work activities, including ones requiring cognitive capabilities. Digitalization will have far-reaching impact on the global workforce involving independent contractors, freelance gig workers, fissured work and outsourced services. The changing nature of work through digital platforms is leading to new ways of control, coordination and collaboration within and between organisations and individual workers.
The changes will not only challenge the existing work models, but also influence wages, income and skills. Major transitions lie ahead and could lead to income polarisation and inequality. Technology hubs and online work centres tend to be located in urban areas and operate in English, encouraging investment by policy makers in infrastructure such as roads and transport while neglecting to support the more traditional sectors such as agriculture or artisanal industry in rural areas. This implies digitalization is deeply implicated in the changes required to address our global challenges such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for health, education, wellbeing and security or as put by Thomas Piketty (2014),* the challenges of inequality*.
The notion of the 'digital divide' between the global South and North, while much discussed in academic and policy literature raises numerous issues as a result of the changing nature of work (Allen 2017; Avgerou and Walsham 2017; Roberts et al. 2014). Differences in opportunities are presented to individuals, communities, or organisations by technologies, mainly as a consequence of deficits in access to the technologies, capacity to use them, relevant contextual content and appropriate application. How then does inclusion into the digital economy operate? Inclusion is not just a mirror image of exclusion, and that to achieve inclusion, it is not sufficient to curb exclusion mechanisms, but to enhance positive measures of inclusion. As Herbst (1974) put it to underscore the social significance of work, "the product of work is men". However, participation in work-life is highly varied across a number of dimensions including gender, developed vs developing regions, temporal vs permanent employment, migrant workers, entrepreneurship opportunities. The dichotomy between online and 'real' life is dismantling, making our online behaviour embedded into rather outside of our everyday lives (Faraj et al. 2011). Digital online platforms are vehicles for community building and sharing, for instance in the form of open source or crowdsourcing. Simultaneously, the traces we willingly if not always consciously leave of our online lives is the source of tech companies' harvesting of behaviour data for their own commercial purposes (Zuboff 2019).
The IFIP Working Groups 8.2, 9.1 and 9.4 have a long history of supplementing the dominant technology-push accounts of digitalization with socially informed ones. This joint conference brings together these three groups for the much-needed analysis of the social preconditions, engagement and consequences of digitalization visibility. With increasingly vocal proclamations of the consequences of digitalisation, there is a need for socially informed analysis of the uptake of digitalisation for work and everyday life in the manner traditionally promoted by all three of the IFIP working groups. The conference seeks to stimulate and encourage critical discussion of potential shifts in the changing world of work, organisations and its implications in the developing world.
The venue for the joint IFIP conference is Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad and Bangalore are key manifestations of the ongoing struggle of the Global South to tap into, not to say drive, the new digital economy.
The conference will facilitate a reflection and discussion about the experiences with India's efforts so far. With a population exceeding 1.2 billion, India is important in itself but even more so as an early and ambitious example of engaging in the value generation of the digital economy.
For the joint IFIP WG 8.2, 9.1 and 9.4 conference in 2020 we are seeking rigorous and relevant empirical (qualitative and quantitative) studies as well as conceptual and theoretical papers apprising digitalisation in terms of the future of work, organizing and development.
We solicit full research papers with maximum length of 8000 words. The submission site will open on March 27 and close on May 18, 2020.
Notification about acceptance will be sent on July 30. The accepted full papers will be included in the proceedings book published by Springer.
We also solicit research-in-progress papers in the form of extended abstracts, with a maximum length of 2000 words plus references. The submission deadline for these is September 10, with notification of acceptance on October 20. These papers will be worked on in thematically grouped Paper Development Sessions in a roundtable format. They will not appear in the main conference proceedings, but will be listed in the program and published in separate PDW proceedings prior to the conference.
If coming from a developing country as classified by the UNESCO, authors with accepted papers can apply for travel grants.

References:
Allen, J.P. (2017). Technology and inequality: concentrated wealth in a digital world. Palgrave. Program-at-a-Glance Keynote I

Overcoming Gender Inequality in the Digital World
Renana Jhabvala Self employed Women's Association I thank the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) for inviting me to this conference and would like to commend it for taking up the difficult task of addressing issues of digital inequality. There are many forms of digital inequality, which I am sure the conference will address. However in this talk I would like to focus on a particular form that is gender inequality in the digital world.
I come from SEWA, Self employed Women's Association, which started as a trade union in India working with women in the informal sector and has developed into a family of organisations which include all kinds of social enterprises and direct capacity building reaching out to SEWA's 1.7 million members for a variety of functions, from fighting for rights, especially economic rights, to delivering services such as microfinance, health care, child care and helping women to form social enterprises to access the markets. The women who are members of SEWA include rural women such as small farmers, agriculture workers livestock producers and urban workers such as domestic workers, street vendors and of course many more trades. These women constitute over 90% of the female workforce in India. And SEWA is confined not only to India but has also founded international networks and federations such as HomeNet, the international network of homebased workers, StreetNet, the network of street vendors and the International Domestic Workers Federation. These are the women I am going to be talking about today. They are the women at the base of the economic pyramid and so already face social as well as economic inequality, which are now compounded by digital inequality. Digital inequality is both a consequence of the socio-economic inequality, as well as a cause to deepen these other inequalities.
In order to tackle digital inequality, it is really important that we understand the degree of inequality, and are able to measure it. There are many different estimates of gender digital inequality and it becomes quite difficult to actually put all these figures together to come to one conclusion. For example the Kantor IMRB study says that only 30% of women use internet services and 38% use mobile phones as opposed to 71% of men, whereas the a GSMA study says only 16% of women were using internet services. The Pew centre tells us that 34% of men and 15% of women have smartphones, whereas the IAMAI (internet and mobile association of India tells us that double the number of men use the internet as compared to women. There are many more studies which I will not quote here. But looking at the welter of statistics we have, it is obvious that we need reliable figures on the degree of inequality.
Regardless of the exact numbers, it is obvious that there is a high level of difference between men and women on the use of the most common digital assets such as mobile phones, smartphones and all means of accessing the internet. There is no existing data, but observation shows that these differences are even higher among the families who are at the base of the economic pyramid.
The reasons for these differences are well known and mirror the socio-economic inequality that exists in the world in general and in India in particular. Women have lower levels of education, and especially among older women, a higher level of illiteracy; patriarchal mind-sets which do not allow women freedom to explore the outside world; product contents on digital devices which are more male oriented; a fear of online harassment; lack of digital literacy; a reluctance to spend family funds on women--when there is a smartphone in the house, it is usually the men who use it.
Although the digital gap affects both the social and economic aspects of a woman's life, here I would like to focus more on women's economic status, as women are particularly disadvantaged economically. According to the National Sample Survey (NSS), the female labour force participation rate is only 27%, and women earn, on the average, about 50% of a man's earnings. If women are to reduce this gap , they need access to digital assets. Digital Assets can be defined as-a) digital infrastructure, tools, hardware or devices, for example, mobile phones, personal computers, digital kiosks etc., that enable access to digital technology, as well as b) digital platforms, processes or entities, for example, e-marketplace, mobile banking, information channels, digital documents, that help access opportunities of gainful employment and entrepreneurship. In other words, digital assets are both tools and processes that facilitate access to information, resources, and opportunities for employment, and better income.
Digital assets do not, however, exist on their own, they need to be embedded into the larger system. An important part of our economy, indeed of our daily life, is the financial sector, and women need to be part of it, as in today's world, money is the oil which keeps life running. Worldwide there is inequality in financial inclusion although financial inclusion has been a priority in India, and the Government made a big effort to open bank accounts for all. However, with the widespread use of debit and credit cards, and the introduction of fintech, financial inclusion has acquired a digital aspects which excludes most women. Our experience has shown that with some digital literacy women can overcome these barriers and begin to use digital tools with ease. SEWA has trained digital sakhis who work mainly in rural areas and train women (and also men when they request it), in how to use ATM machines, how to access their bank accounts through Bhim and other applications and how to apps like Paytm for all kinds of payments. These digital sakhis are not only highly regarded in their villages, but they themselves perform many digital services for the villagers, thereby earning a living.
Many of the digital sakhis in different states in India have attached themselves to banks as business correspondents and are able to provide important banking services. During the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown for example, most people were unable to access banks due to lack of transport, and it was these women who reached families with their pensions, with cash relief from the Government and helped them access their savings.
Over 65% of India's population still lives in villages, and a large proportion of them is dependent on agriculture. In fact, about 75% of rural working women are engaged in agriculture. There is a feminization of agriculture as men move to more lucrative employment, or migrate to urban areas, women have been taking care of the farms and the livestock. Digitization has played an important part in imparting information and in marketing of crops, vegetables and milk, and the digital gender gap means that these women farmers tend to get left behind with lower productivity and lower prices for their produce. Our interventions in these areas have shown that agriculture can be made more productive. Firstly, we have collaborated with meteorological department to bring women weather updates on their mobile phones, which enables them to decide when to plant, when to give water, when to harvest etc.
Second we have linked them with available apps and websites which give the prices on that day in the local mandis. This has made a big difference as mostly women farmers tend to sell their produce to local traders, and by knowing the price at the mandi they can obtain a fair price. Thirdly, we have an IVR system whereby they receive messages and small talks from experts about existing agricultural practices in their area, which can increase their yield.
In both urban and rural areas, many women are self employed micro entrepreneurs, and often the whole family is involved in the enterprise. They need to reach the market to sell their products. Marketing is getting increasingly digitised too, many of us order our food, clothes and other items from marketing platforms such as Amazon, Big Bazaar, Swiggy and many many more. These too, are causing increasing gaps, as the goods which are supplied on these platforms tend to be from bigger enterprises which are controlled by men. Women's enterprises tend to be small, often micro, and they are unable to access these platforms. However many women microentrpreneurs have found a way around this by using free apps such as Whatsapp and Facebook and have created local marketing channels through which they have been able to service their customers. Some platforms have been able to reach out to women who provide services, for example Urban Clap has on-boarded beauticians who will offer personalised services in people's houses. Other services include child care, domestic work and old age care.
India is a young country, with about one-third of its population being below the age of 24 years. Girls education has grown by leaps and bounds, primary education is near universal, and although girls lag behind boys in middle, secondary and college education, this too has grown tremendously for girls in the last two decades. These girls are better prepared to access the internet than their previous generation. However, for young girls there is an additional barrier. Their families are over protective, and do not want to allow them access to the internet or to smartphones. We have found that young girls often have to depend on their brothers even to get important information like their own exam results. When young educated girls are able to overcome the barrier of family they use it to enhance both their knowledge and their opportunities. For example, some girls earn extra money by doing tuitions, having learnt on how to teach others through Youtube videos; others take designs off the internet to stitch clothes for themselves and others; still others use Youtube to learn to dance or sing or cook. Some young girls have learnt Kobo, a data collection digital tool and collect data for research agencies; others help their families and neighbours to book train tickets or order products off platforms. Access to the internet can tap the huge potential that exists in these young, first generation educated girls. 2020 has been the year that the menace of COVID-19 has hit the whole world, leading to lockdowns, economic slowdowns and social distancing. During this year digital tools have been perhaps the most important way that people have been able to connect with one another. Women have been frontline workers using tools like Whatsapp and IVR to reach health messages to large numbers, to ensure Government benefits of food and cash were reaching those in need, to reach nutrition and immunization to children, to ensure pregnant women got to hospital and in general trying to make life for people a little easier during one of the most difficult times.
Society will not progress if half the world gets left further and further behind due to digital inequalities. Digital assets in the hands of women will not only empower them but will add to employment, GDP and an enrichment of society as a whole. This inequality must be overcome.
Over the last decade, a wave of crises -financial crisis, climate change, and COVID-19 pandemic, antiracism movement -have amplified and made visible the challenges of inequality in our society and global economy. In the West, the scale of covid-19 pandemic has made visible the inequality in access to healthcare by ethnic minorities. For example, black Americans are 3.5 times more likely to develop COVID-19 and to have a poor outcome from the infection while Latino Americans are almost twofold higher in that probability. In a developing countries context, the development and scaling of mobile payments have been deployed to address challenges of financial exclusion (Oborn, Barrett, Orlikowski and Kim 2019) to reduce inequalities associated with accessing financial markets. However, the trajectory of mobile payments as it scales across different geographical places is not uniform in addressing inequality of financial exclusion. Mobile technology are also being used to enable carbon payments to farmer networks in developing countries who are participating in reforestation programmes to help address the riskscape associated with the crisis of climate change. We propose that the conceptual merging of riskscapes and scaling are useful in conducting practice-based studies which seek to contribute to our understanding of the challenges of inequality in contemporary contexts.
In this talk, I will explore the challenges (and opportunities) of using mobile payments to promote financial and social inclusion, as well as in supporting climate action in crises of sustainability. The role of mobile payments as a digital innovation in promoting economic and social development has garnered considerable attention (Aker and Mbiti 2010) over the last decade. Studies have examined the quality of healthcare (Hoffman et al. 2010, access to financial services (Shamim 2007, Duncombe and Boateng 2009, Mas and Morawczynski 2009, amongst many other areas of deployment. A central focus of the digital innovation literature has been on the characteristic nature of convergence (across digital platforms) and generativity (associated with reprogrammability) in enabling different forms of innovation across time and in different contexts. Studies have noted the potential of user innovation and new capabilities being incorporated after initial design (Von Hippel 1988, Yoo et al. 2012 in scaling the digital innovation (Huang et al. 2017). At the same time, other studies (Orlikowski and Barrett 2014) have recognized that there may be significant challenges in the scaling of digital innovation in addressing financial exclusion across different contexts.
In examining the empirical phenomenon of scaling the deployment of mobile payments for financial inclusion we draw on the concept of trajectory dynamics (Oborn et al. 2019) to theorize the ways in which the innovation trajectory intermingles with and is transformed by interactions with local trajectories in a specific place. We discuss how this concept can be used to explore the challenges in scaling mobile payments across similar yet distinct developing country contexts. In so doing, we build on the insight that phenomena are shaped by different trajectories that influence outcomes (Timmermans 1998), and suggest that place(s) has an important influence on the innovation trajectory (Oborn et al. 2019). Such trajectory dynamics emerge in and over time and place.
We discuss the wider implications of our findings for developing practice-based studies that explore the scaling of digital phenomena. Specifically, we suggest that the sociomaterial enactment of contemporary digital phenomena must account for the multiple, situated places where work is now being performed through emerging technologies, for example, the provision of correspondent banking services in remote locations (Leonardi et al., 2016). With respect to mobile payments, Oborn et al. (2019) adopts a sociomaterial practice perspective to understand how a digital innovation (mobile money) was transformed in multiple and unexpected ways as it moved from a specific locale of development (in the UK) to distant places of implementation and use (different countries in sub-Saharan Africa) where it interacted with multiple different local conditions and practices. This enactment over time and in multiple places reconfigured both the specific digital innovation as well as the conditions of possibility for financial inclusion. The study highlights that while digital innovations are transferable across contexts, it is the active engagement of the innovation with local conditions that matter for the specific accomplishments that are enacted in practice. These insights underscore the criticality of asking where, when, and how specific digital innovations are developed, implemented and engaged with on the ground.
We discuss the different enactments of scale of mobile money in Kenya and Tanzania which yielded different trajectory dynamics in these developing country contexts despite the similarities of geography (neighbouring countries in sub-Saharan Africa), and which were expected to yield a similar scaling dynamic (Orlikowski and Barrett 2014). Furthermore, we reflect on and discuss the scaling of digital innovations in addressing different riskscapes. For example, in addition to addressing financial exclusion, mobile payments can enable social inclusion such as access to clean energy through business models that combine mobile loans and payments (e.g. M-Kopa). Furthermore, mobile money can help address climate change through the provision of carbon payments at scale across different places over time.
In addition to scaling, we suggest that practice-based studies should better account for riskscapes which focus on the consequentiality of risk to account for crisis in contemporary society. Risk is more than just a concept which helps to rationalize future gains and losses, but also a concept which performatively shapes practice and space. While phenomena such as climate change may well be global in extent, their impacts are spatially differentiated. Riskscapes include a scalar dimension of risk. More specifically, riskscapes recognize the mutually constitutive relations between risk and space and can be understood as socially produced 'temporalspatial' phenomena. They are temporalspatial phenomena, because they combine the material and practice components of risk and relate them to space. They link the material dimension of physical threats, the discursive dimension of how people perceive and communicate risks, and the dimension of agency, i.e. how people are dealing with risk. We suggest that riskscapes, like the nexuses of practice, are open and fluid, multiple and subjective. And they overlap, leading to the emergence of new combinations and dynamics of risk. Practice based studies which examine riskcapes should therefore account for connections between risk, meaning, practice, time and space (Mueller-Mahn, Everts, Stephan 2018).
We propose that the conceptual merging of riskscapes and scale allows us to appreciate the consequentiality of risk in practice-based studies through its focus on the scalar negotiations of risk (Aadlers 2018). Empirically, we draw on ongoing research which examines how mobile money may provide carbon payments to scale farmer networks. These farmers in developing countries are participating in climate action efforts globally through the development of reforestation networks. In so doing they are participating together with large corporations in the West to help address climate change as a quintessential crisis of our times. The case study examines how farmer networks through their reforestation projects are providing carbon offsets for organizations in the West who are aiming to achieve carbon neutrality.
In these carbon sequestration projects, mobile money is an important mechanism by which farmers can receive carbon payments for trees planted. Moreoever, our study shows how mobile payments are also integral to the organizing of farmer network meetings, and are a critical enabler to scaling sustainable growth across farmer networks over time. While the use of mobile payments is important for facilitating the disbursement of financial resources to farmers in a timely manner it is not necessarily sufficient for responsible scaling. There are challengtes and risks to scaling the reforestation program responsibly. For example, as a bottom up partnership guided by the local subsistence farmers, there is a need to assure a commitment to core values by keeping the farmers vision and needs central while reinforcing local leadership. Our ongoing study is also exploring the risks and challenges of ensuring timely payments which depend on effective quantification strategies and capabilities on the ground while depending on the volatile and unpredictability of carbon markets which are at an early stage of development.
In addition to these conceptual developments on riskscapes and scaling, we reflect on the practical challenges of conducting practice-based studies to examine the scaling of digital innovations. Specifically, we discuss the challenges of conducting practice-based studies to examine the rapid scaling of the digital innovation deployed in different places and over time, and in times of crisis characterized by evolving riskscapes.