Nicole Teke

A PhD candidate in sociology at IDHE.S, University of Paris Nanterre, her thesis focuses on housework performed through digital home service platforms. She is also a member of the European research project ORIGAMI – Home Care Digital Platforms and Industrial Relations.

In the Name of Women: The Uberization of Domestic Work

11:15 AM

Home service platforms promote their domestic cleaning services as a way to reduce the customer’s "mental load," to "avoid arguments within couples," or to "relieve women after childbirth," presenting them as a solution to the crisis of reproductive labor. This model creates a two-tier system of reproductive work: a commodity for those who can afford it, and a burden for those who cannot.
This presentation aims to explore how these platforms target women by offering to resolve the issues of housework through a capitalist reappropriation of feminist discourse: positioning work as a source of empowerment that helps workers better balance their time, while offering clients the opportunity to offload this burden in the name of "marital peace" or "maternal exhaustion."