New Forms of Capitalism and Gender

We live in an age of disastrously late stage capitalism. An era in which capitalism has shifted and morphed it's tried and true methods of extracting profit from the population by expanding onto the digital frontier. It has outgrown it's territory in the physical world, and has been forced into the digital world in order to keep profit numbers exponentially increasing. Some names for these new forms of capitalism include "Platform Capitalism" and "Surveillance Capitalism" both of them insidious in their own ways. Liang details platform capitalism by stating, "...by focusing on four of its main facets, namely crowdsourcing, sharing economy, gig economy and platform economy." (pg 309) Collectively, these components make up a capitalist economy in which workers rely on digital platforms which guarantee single periods of work or "gigs" doing theoretically easy labor, but providing no benefits and protections should something go awry; An example of companies that utilize this form of capitalism would be Uber or Doordash. Woods describes Surveillance Capitalism as, "...the changing format of the market settles upon new modalities of accumulating capital, namely the extraction, condensation and processing of information by a few technological and logistics hegemons." (pg 343) In simpler terms, Surveillance Capitalism is when profit is produced by extracting information from customers to sell on the marketplace; An example of a company which utilizes this form of capitalism would be Google or Amazon. With these new forms of capitalism, come new ways of how gender is utilized, defined, and reinforced.

Our first example comes from the article "Brothers and broken dreams: Men, Masculinity, and emotions in Platform Capitalism" by Trang Thi Quynh Dinh, a doctoral researcher, and Janne Tienari, the Professor of Management and Organization at the Hanken School of Economics, Finland. Dinh and Tienari's article describes how platform capitalism through a rideshare service clashed against Vietnamese men's ideas of masculinity and their cultural expectations for men. This Platform Company (Pseudonym used by the article) lured the men in with promises of being "partners" in the business, expounding on the ideals of individualism and entrepreneurship. These "partnerships" were nothing more than the typical exploitative freelance work employed by the likes of Uber and Lyft. Drivers have no protections guaranteeing them wages. They are subject to unrealistic quotas relative to the massive amount of drivers, which severely limits the amount of clients available to a single driver. These are dead end jobs which serve only to exploit drivers as much as possible. The lack of autonomy and upward mobility alongside the low wages clashed with traditional Vietnamese concepts of Masculinity. As stated by Jayakody & Thu Phuong, cited by Dinh & Tienari, "Vietnam is a male breadwinner society: men are expected to provide for their family instead of doing care work, even if their spouses work outside the home." (pg 612) Drivers inability to provide for their families with the work and wages provided by Platform Company caused much distress and anger while also challenging drivers personal masculinity.

In my opinion, events such as these, which directly threaten and challenge the traditional values associated with gender, only end with those values being reinforced. Cultural ideas of gender and gender roles can only be questioned and dismantled in amicable conditions. Situations in which a person has been forced into and without the ability to leave, that attempt to question said person's beliefs only end up further cementing those beliefs. Generally, people only feel good about giving something up when they do it voluntarily; If they're forced into it they'll resent whatever or whomever forced them. By tricking desperate workers into an exploitative job that removes their main source of income and their main source of masculine pride, Platform Company has most likely further cemented their ideas of masculinity. If these workers don't feel like men from being unable to support their families, how can they question what really makes them men? How can they begin to question the cultural construction of gender and gender roles, if they don't feel secure in their own gender? By utilizing Platform Capitalism, Platform Company has only served to further cement traditional gender roles in Vietnam, or at least in these workers.

Our second example comes from the paper "Asking more of Siri and Alexa: feminine persona in service of surveillance capitalism" by Heather Suzanne Woods, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Technology in the Department of Communication Studies at Kansas State University. Woods' article discusses how Alexa and Siri's feminine personas are used to dissuade any user's anxieties about the surveillance innate in their products. Alexa and Siri are virtual assistants used by Amazon and Apple respectively. These virtual assistants offer a wide array of different services to their users, such as quick internet searches, keeping track of dates and times, or delivering notifications. While these assistants seem to only provide helpful services to the user, their main purpose is for data collection. By analyzing the user's conversations and how the assistants services are employed by the user, Amazon and Apple gain incredibly valuable data which they use to improve their products and sell to the highest bidder. Woods states, "Siri and Alexa enact digital domesticity by performing a feminine persona which mobilizes traditional, conservative values of homemaking, care-taking, and administrative 'pink collar' labor." (pg 335) By using feminine personas to perform traditionally female jobs, consumers are lulled into accepting the mass surveillance utilized by the products.

I believe that, by using feminine personas and female voices as the default or only option in these widely used services, Amazon and Apple are reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes in order to facilitate the widespread acceptance of surveillance capitalism. As quoted earlier by Woods, Alexa and Siri perform traditionally feminine jobs in their services. Jobs like reading out recipes or tracking timers to help facilitate cooking. In Alexa's case ordering domestic items off of Amazon so users don't have to make the trip to the store; And in Siri's case keeping track of important dates, setting reminders, writing down notes, or reading out notifications like a secretary. By performing these specific tasks, users subconsciously associate and reinforce them with women. Children who grow up with these devices in the home will learn that it is normal to expect women to do these kinds of jobs.

The key part of this is that these feminine personas are either the only ones available or the default. In Alexa's case, there are no other personas to choose from. While Siri might have different voices to choose from, the actual option to change it is buried in the settings and not something asked during initial setup; Not to mention that a majority of the options to choose from are other feminine voices, with only 10 masculine voices and 34 feminine voices.

Given the amount of research and thought that typically gets put into choices like this, odds are that these decisions are deliberate. The odds are that Amazon and Apple have statistics which tell them that people are more likely to use these products if they hear a feminine voice, and the more likely people are to use the products the more data they can generate and the more profit they can get. By using specifically feminine voices for these products, Amazon and Apple are reinforcing gender stereotypes through surveillance capitalism. Through intentional and unintentional methods, these new forms of capitalism are reinforcing traditional gender roles. Unless these methods stop being profitable, odds are they'll never stop using them.

I really enjoyed reading through these articles, and I'd highly recommend that you read them as well if they sounded interesting to you. While I can't host them on here, I found most of them using academic search premier through the Brookdale library services. I also believe that the doi links included in the works cited should take you to the articles.

New Forms of Capitalism and Gender

Works Cited