As part of the ‘Re-wiring India’s Digitalising Economy for Women’s Rights and Well-being' project, we invited proposals for the second edition of the National Gender Fellowship. Facilitated by the European Commission and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the fellowship supports early-career scholars, researchers, and practitioners, in the development of research studies that explore the multifaceted relationship between digital economy, gender, and inclusion in India, focusing on women’s experiences.
Research Outputs from the National Gender Fellowship 2024
Our diverse and interdisciplinary network of 10 fellows is working towards the shared goal of building evidence-based research that can inform policies and practices promoting gender equality in the digital age.
1. Women in Healthcare: ASHA Workers and Digital Transformation in Kashmir
Sadaf Masoodi
In India, frontline health workers–ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists) are central to delivering basic health facilities. This paper provides a critical look into the workings of ASHAs in Kashmir, showing them at an intersection of militarization, state surveillance, societal policing, digital exploitation,and gendered labor.
The study aims to shed light on the conditions of ASHA workers from Kashmir valley as co-creators of knowledge, through participatory methodology rooted in feminist and decolonial thought–challenging extractive approaches to research. The interviews reveal how communication blackouts, mobility restrictions, and digital attendance mechanisms intensify the precarity
of these workers while simultaneously invisiblizing their embodied labor.
The paper contributes to the feminist digital labor scholarship by foregrounding the intersection of militarization, gender, and technology. It also lays a path for rethinking digital health policies through frameworks that include complex realities of conflicted regions like Kashmir.
Read the full paper here.
2. Ghost in the Machine: Gender, Human Mediation, and Power in India’s Domestic Work Platforms
Salonie Muralidhara Hiriyur
The platformization of domestic work represents a unique phenomenon shaped by the feminization of care, household-based labor, intimate employment relationships, and the digital gender divide. However, emerging platform scholarship has focused predominantly on masculinized sectors such as ride-hailing and delivery, under-theorizing care work and its
distinct dynamics.
Addressing this gap, this paper draws on empirical evidence from India's platformized domestic work sector to theorize how mediation reshapes workers' employment experiences. The findings challenge dominant platform disintermediation narratives by documenting the persistence of human agents within digital infrastructures and analyzing their influence on workers' employment access and arrangements.
Through qualitative research grounded in Fraser's social justice framework, the paper foregrounds women workers' lived experiences and standpoints to substantiate these claims. In doing so, the paper advocates for feminist analytical approaches within platform studies.
Read the full paper here.
To read papers published under the first edition of the National Gender Fellowship, head here.