FEMGEN 152: Gender, Work, and the Global Digital Economy

Course Description

How do understandings of gender shape the meaning and organization of work around the world in the digital age? And how is our contemporary digital economy shaped by often intertwined ideas about gender, ethnicity, and race? Feminist scholars have long studied the gendered and racialized dynamics of work, such as the impact of migration flows on the global care industry and the feminization of housework and "service with a smile." Rapid technological change has created new forms of labor in the content moderation industry, the gig economy, transnational surrogacy, online sex work, and automation and AI?all sites where shifting notions of work and the worker challenge existing frameworks around immigration and legal status, national borders, and workers' rights. To investigate these changes, this course takes an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational approach. We will examine key debates in scholarship on reproductive labor, domestic work, and sexuality and political economy to analyze workplaces, conditions, and policies in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe.