Invisible Work Research Articles

“Leave me out of it and raise my salary”: Invisible work in the labor market and the gender wage gap

While the literature shows that “invisible work” – work that is neither defined nor recognized as labor – persists in the workplace, its relation to labor market outcomes, especially wages, remains relatively underexplored. This study examines the connection between invisible work and wages through a gendered perspective. Utilizing mixed-methods sequential analysis, we conducted 12 group interviews with employed women and men in Israel, uncovering four types of invisible work: physical care work, emotion labor, administrative work, and teamwork. Subsequently, we surveyed a representative sample of the Israeli labor force (n = 964). Regression analyses revealed significant relations between three types of invisible work and wages: doing physical care work correlated negatively with wages for all, while performing emotion labor and administrative work rewarded men more than women. Insights from the interviews elucidated gendered mechanisms linking wages to each invisible work type. The study emphasizes the need for gender-sensitive measures to address labor market inequality.

Invaluable invisibility: academic housekeeping within the IPCC

This article discusses “academic housekeeping” undertaken within IPCC, understood as the work that is rarely made visible or rewarded, but is nevertheless essential to the success of the organization. It explores the conditions, motivations, and implications for individual researchers involved in the IPCC, with particular emphasis on the invisible, un(der)recognised and unrewarded work they engage in. The empirical material consists of an interview study of researchers involved in the IPCC assessment work. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of unrewarded work for individual experts, expert organisations, and academic institutions.

Caring Technologies: Confronting Invisible Work in Digital Capitalism

ABSTRACTIn recent years, critical studies on digital platforms have emphasized that contemporary capitalism increasingly exploits the relational and cognitive faculties of human beings as sources of value. At the same time, activist projects are emerging in order to challenge the logics of commodification, individualization and accumulation that govern digital capitalism, being grounded in values that aim to promote visibility of labor and cooperation. This article contributes the notion of “caring technologies” where care is employed as a critical lens able to uncover the kinds of productive work made invisible by capitalist logics governing mainstream digital platforms and as a value for designing digital technologies aiming at challenging these very logics. By drawing on feminist theories about domestic work, we stress the analytical and interventionist character of care insofar as it sheds light on the forms of invisible work that allows the productive system to function and a politics that values social and economic relations usually neglected in the capitalist system. Ultimately, the article elaborates on a politics of caring to confront digital capitalism, transforming care into a logic that informs activist interventions which value agential and inalienable aspects characterizing the diverse forms of labor mediated by digital technologies.

Workarounds as enabling factor in the use of assistive technology amongst white-collar workers with visual impairment

PurposeThis study aims to provide an explorative perspective on how workarounds – defined as practices that deviate from an official pathway to a target – delineate a decisive element for users with visual impairment to enable assistive technologies in the context of office work.Design/methodology/approachAn ethnographic study with in situ observation at participants’ work locations together with interviews was conducted to cater for the explorative nature of this study.FindingsThe study outlines three types of workarounds that can be distinguished into: (1) own investment into invisible work, (2) engaging support from colleagues and (3) the complete circumvention of technology use. It is furthermore discussed that workarounds remain largely unnoticed but yield the potential as an enabling factor for insights into the use of assistive technology (AT).Practical implicationsThe layered model of workarounds that locates them at the individual, social and organisational level can guide the design and analysis of enabling technologies in complex office work contexts. Technology designers can incorporate enquiries on workarounds into participatory or co-creative design processes. Information technology (IT) professionals and leaders of IT support teams can use this model to gain insights from workarounds into improvement opportunities for the effective integration of assistive technologies.Originality/valueThis study connects the concept of workarounds, which is deeply rooted in the tradition of workplace studies and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), with the practices of handling technology employed by knowledge workers with visual impairments to retain workability. This approach offers a novel perspective on the embeddedness of enabling technologies in the context of knowledge work. It highlights the intricate ways in which technology is integrated into daily work practices, thereby providing valuable insights into the intersection of AT and knowledge work.

The Shadow Bodies of Mice: Invisible Work in Translational Medicine

The clinician-scientist is often viewed as the crucial nexus in the translational processes that turn scientific research into medical technologies, including but not limited to pharmaceuticals. To create a point of contrast, and to consider the theme of invisible labor, this paper foregrounds an alternative actant who has also been deemed a vital nexus in translational medicine within Science and Technology Studies: the laboratory animal as model organism. Based on observational research conducted in an animal facility that was caring for laboratory mice as well as the immunological laboratory that was conducting research regarding ageing and vaccine uptake using those mice, this paper explores how mouse bodies and animal technicians’ knowledge of those mouse bodies are rendered invisible through the everyday flows of translation. I draw on Balka and Star's concept of “shadow bodies” to consider variations in how mouse bodies are understood across the translational process and probe the consequences this has for what knowledge is legitimately produced and by whom. By making the invisible work of mice and of technicians visible, I argue that the organizational filters of translational medicine may inadvertently make the work of animal technicians all the harder, in a manner that reproduces social inequalities.

Curation is Communal: Transparency, Trust, and (In)visible Labour

Research about trust and transparency within the realm of research data management and sharing typically centres on accreditation and compliance. Missing from many of these conversations are the social systems and enabling structures that are built on interpersonal connections. As members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a consortium of United States-based institutional and non-profit data repositories, we have experienced first-hand the effort required to develop and sustain interpersonal trust and the benefits it provides to curation. In this paper, we reflect on the well-documented realities of curator and labour invisibility; the importance of fostering active communities (such as the DCN); and how trust, vulnerability and connectivity among colleagues leads to better curation practices. Through an investigation into data curators in the DCN, we found that, while curation can be isolating and invisible work, having a network of trusted peers helps alleviate these burdens and makes us better curators. We conclude with practical suggestions for implementing trust and transparency in relationships with colleagues and researchers.

Digitalizing Access to Care: How Self-Check-In Kiosks Shape Access to Care and Efficiency of Hospital Services

Responding to labor shortages and rising healthcare expenses, hospitals increasingly turn to self-check-in kiosks to streamline service delivery and improve patients’ experiences. The purpose of this study was to reflect on the implementation of these self-check-in kiosks in a Dutch university hospital, particularly in relation to access to care for more vulnerable patients and intended efficiency goals. We followed a technology-in-practice approach to better understand how new technologies shape care practices in relation to in/exclusion and carried out an ethnographic action study involving desk research, participatory observations, semi-structured interviews, and reflection sessions with developers and hospital staff. Data were analyzed through ethnographic content analysis. Our results show that although self-check-in kiosks work well for some patients, many people experience practical and psychosocial difficulties, especially those who go through a complex care pathway, are low-literate, experience a distance the online world, or have sensory, motor, or cognitive impairments. Kiosks are not yet attuned to these patients and typically leave little flexibility and room for negotiation and personal support in what is, for many, a foreign environment. Therefore, patients frequently seek confirmation and assistance from already downsized or busy staff. In conclusion, we find that digitalization under the banner of efficiency within a healthcare system already under pressure carries risks, as it can unintentionally generate extra (invisible) work for patients and care professionals and threaten access to and quality of care for patients most in need. A more concentrated effort on refining the digitalization of healthcare processes using an inclusive-technology-in-practice approach has the potential to contribute to fairer and more efficient care for all patients.

Between invisibility and having a voice: The marginalization of gendered non-fiction writers in the South Korean television industry

This article examines how gendered workers experience invisibility in the South Korean television industry, focusing on writers who produce non-fiction programs, such as journalism shows and documentaries. Based on my in-depth interviews with 41 research participants, I reveal how the patriarchal, capitalist, and intensely hierarchical labour management in the industry has shaped an invisible writing workforce who are mostly women. Specifically, my research suggests that the exploitation of this invisible writing workforce takes two forms: the devaluation and underpayment of their labour and putting to work their marginalized subjectivities to enhance the quality of the programs in the production process. Finally, this research shows how writers recognize themselves as invisible workers and understand their invisibility as a form of discrimination and exclusion.

Como gênero e raça estruturam o sistema prisional: Diálogos com Angela Davis sobre racismo e sexismo no controle punitivo brasileiro

Abstract We present an analysis of the phenomenon of female incarceration in Brazil, placing it as a concrete determination of the capitalist mode of production. We start from the issue of how the categories of gender and race act as structural elements of Brazilian penal control, based on the reading proposed by Angela Davis, in dialogue with authors of Brazilian feminist. For this reason, initially, we will promote initial debates about oppression as structures of social relations in capitalism. Subsequently, it will be necessary to discuss the oppression of gender and race in the Brazilian context, especially considering the overload of reproductive, invisible, and precarious work. Finally, we will analyze the consolidation of Brazilian punitive control as an instrument for the management of disposable bodies and the constant production and reproduction of racism and sexism in Brazilian culture. We will use materialistic analysis as a methodology, with the critical interpellation (ana-dialectical moment of the method) through the critical analytical, theoretical framework of the black feminism theory. With the formulations, we can conclude, in short, that the violent and racist management of the penal system maintains a solid Brazilian social structure, subjecting the bodies of black women to the harder process of vulnerability imposed by punitive state control.

Crediting Invisible Work: Congress and the Lawmaking Productivity Metric (LawProM)

Congressional observers have long been interested in the distinction between legislative “workhorses” and “showhorses.” However, when scholars operationalize this by measuring legislator productivity, they often neglect many realities of modern lawmaking by focusing on the traditional bill sponsorship and passage process. To better align measurement with practice, we compile widely available data on bill sponsorship, cosponsorship, and amendments; we also use text-as-data methods to credit instances of behind-the-scenes lawmaking via text reuse between bills. We weight achievements from each of these lawmaking methods to create the Lawmaking Productivity Metric for House Members of the 101–113th Congresses. Including methods of lawmaking beyond bill sponsorship provides important insights about who the congressional workhorses are. In particular, we find that traditional measures systematically undercount the legislative successes of women and likely Black Members of Congress because they disproportionately legislate in less visible ways.

Emotion Work in Caregiving: The Role of Technology to Support Informal Caregivers of Persons Living With Dementia

The CSCW and HCI community has increasingly examined ways to support informal caregivers through technology, given the increasing burden and its consequences on caregivers' emotional and physical health. In this paper, we interviewed 12 informal caregivers of Persons Living With Dementia (PLWD) to understand their needs and current coping strategies for overcoming caregiving burden, specifically around emotion work. The caregivers associated different personal meanings with caregiving. Participants wanted technology to take over some of the utilitarian, mundane caregiving tasks. At the same time, they did not want technology to take over the tasks that fostered personal connections with PLWD. As the disease progressed, caregivers started to lose their perceived bond with PLWD, making it more challenging to juggle between rewarding, positive emotions with negative experiences. We discuss such complexity of emotion work using the notion of Invisible Work to understand when technology should or should not support the emotion work engaged in informal caregiving.

Missed Opportunities for Human-Centered AI Research: Understanding Stakeholder Collaboration in Mental Health AI Research

In the mental health domain, patient engagement is key to designing human-centered technologies. CSCW and HCI researchers have delved into various facets of collaboration in AI research; however, previous research neglects the individuals who both produce the data and will be most impacted by the resulting technologies, such as patients. This study examines how interdisciplinary researchers and mental health patients who donate their data for AI research collaborate and how we can improve human-centeredness in mental health AI research. We interviewed patient participants, AI researchers, and clinical researchers in a federally funded mental health AI research project. We used the concept of boundary objects to understand stakeholder collaboration. Our findings reveal that the social media data provided by patient participants functioned as boundary objects that facilitated stakeholder collaboration. Although the collaboration appeared to be successful, we argue that building consensus, or understanding each other's perspectives, can improve the human-centeredness of mental health AI research. Based on the findings, we provide suggestions for human-centered mental health AI research, working with data donors as domain experts, making invisible work visible, and privacy implications.

Twitch spouse: Livestreaming and the legacy of spousal labour in the video game industry

Precarious careers in the games industry have long relied on the unpaid and largely feminized support of spouses and family members. This paper addresses the role of spouses and other domestic cohabitants in the production of live game broadcasts on Twitch, Amazon’s world-leading platform in live video entertainment. I introduce the heuristic of the ‘Twitch Spouse’ to underscore the crucial role that domestic partners have played as invisible workers in the wider games industry, whose precarious conditions have been extended by the rise of at-home livestreaming. Drawing from ‘playful’ interviews and ethnographic observation with 12 Twitch creators located across the United States and Canada, I delineate three themes by which the partners of Twitch streamers vitally contribute to livestreaming: collaborative space production, the management of intimacy, and timekeeping. Herein, I show how a theorization of the ‘Twitch Spouse’ will build future pathways for recognizing the intertwined struggles of domestic and digital work within the precarious horizons of the game industry. This paper argues that Twitch streamers’ conceptualizations of intimate partners’ supportive labour reinforce domesticity and visibility as co-extended forces in the evolving relevance of digital labour to contemporary capitalism.

Making Order in Household Accounting - Digital Invoices as Domestic Work Artifacts

AbstractThe digitization of financial activities in consumers' lives is increasing, and the digitalization of invoicing processes is expected to play a significant role, although this area is not well understood regarding the private sector. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research have a long history of analyzing the socio-material and temporal aspects of work practices that are relevant for the domestic domain. The socio-material structuring of invoicing work and the working styles of consumers must be considered when designing effective consumer support systems. In this ethnomethodologically-informed, design-oriented interview study, we followed 17 consumers in their daily practices of dealing with invoices to make the invisible administrative work involved in this process visible. We identified and described the meaningful artifacts that were used in a spatial-temporal process within various storage locations such as input, reminding, intermediate (for postponing cases) buffers, and archive systems. Furthermore, we identified three different working styles that consumers exhibited: direct completion, at the next opportunity, and postpone as far as possible. This study contributes to our understanding of household economics and domestic workplace studies in the tradition of CSCW and has implications for the design of electronic invoicing systems.

Perspective of Health Care Professionals and Cancer Survivors on the Usage of Technology in Consultations.

This study explored the integration of technology in healthcare consultations between healthcare professionals (HCPs) and cancer survivors. The research aimed to understand how technological tools influence the dynamics and environment of cancer survivor rehabilitation consultations. The study used Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyze the effects of new technological actors in consultations and Invisible Work Theory to uncover hidden workflows associated with technology implementation. The study combined observations and in-depth interviews with HCPs and cancer survivors conducted in March to May 2022, and a follow-up group interview in November 2023. The study revealed that technology's presence notably impacts the relationship between HCPs and cancer survivors, with HCPs expressing concerns that technology disrupts the consultation and challenges the relation. Over time, HCPs gradually began to use laptops during consultations to varying degrees, although the resistance to fully embracing technology persisted. This resistance is attributed to perceived pressure from management and a mismatch with established practices. The findings address the challenges in digital literacy and confidence among HCPs to facilitate the effective incorporation of technology and enhance the patient-clinician relationship. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between digital health tools and patient-clinician relationships, highlighting the complexities and opportunities in digitizing healthcare consultations.

고3 수험생 자녀를 둔 아버지의 가족관계 경험

The purpose of this study is to explore family relationship experiences of a father whose child prepares college entrance and to find out its meaning. In-depth interviews were conducted with five fathers. The data was analyzed based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Participants in the study experienced family relationships by “taking a step back from feelings that cannot be revealed,” “accumulated anxiety and burden”, “increasing authority through mediation and decision-making assistance,” and “invisible hard work and maturity”. Participants experienced anxiety and fear of damage to family relationships while supporting children’s college entrance exams, but could not reveal them. Participants used distancing and rationalization strategies in their children’s academic areas to eliminate worries and anxiety. Participants listened to their wives who were tired of applying for the entrance exam, cared for their children who were sensitive to the entrance exam, and at the same time, were physically exhausted by the burden of private education expenses and supporting their children. Participants experienced the ability to mediate conflicts between children and wives with a rational attitude and help their children make decisions. In this process, the participants felt sorry for their lack at the limit of accountability as middle-aged office workers and fathers, and they could not see their hard work and maturity. This study presented the father’s subjective world experiences and provided an understanding of multi-layered family relationships.

“All hands on deck”: a qualitative study of safeguarding and the transition to telemedical abortion care in England and Wales

The COVID-19 pandemic raised significant challenges for in-person healthcare provision, leading healthcare providers to embrace digital health like never before. Whilst changes were made as part of a public health response, many have now become permanent fixtures of the healthcare landscape, significantly altering the way care is provided not only for patients, but also for the healthcare professionals that provide care. In abortion care in England and Wales, previously stringent regulations on in-person care provision were relaxed to permit the use of telemedicine and self-administration of medications at home. These changes have since been made permanent. However, there remains opposition to remote abortion care pathways on the basis of safeguarding. Opponents argue that it is not feasible to effectively safeguard patients accessing abortion care remotely. We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with abortion care providers in England and Wales. Participants were asked about their views and experiences of the transition to remote care provision, with a particular focus on how they adapted their safeguarding practice. In this article, we present three themes that highlight the changing roles of healthcare professionals in abortion care: (1) a challenging backdrop and resulting apprehension, (2) adaptive practices, and (3) the continued importance of professional curiosity. Across all three themes, participants reflected significantly on how changes were made and what they experienced in the period of transition to telemedicine. In particular, they discussed the changing nature of their professional roles amidst digitalisation. Our findings provide a basis for reflection on the increasing introduction of digital approaches to healthcare provision, highlighting points for caution and emphasising the need to involve professionals in the transition process to ensure vital buy-in. Through this, we articulate two novel understandings of digitalisation: (1) the impact of speed-associated pressures on professional adaptation during digitalisation, and (2) off-proforma safeguarding through telemedicine as a form of invisible non-routine work.

Disobedience, (dis)embodied knowledge management, and decolonization: higher education in The Gambia

AbstractIn this work, we sought to uncover the key strategies and challenges to the integration of Indigenous knowledge as knowledge management practices at a public university in The Gambia. It is often axiomatic in the literature that the incorporation of diverse epistemologies is a key resource for sustainable development; therefore, activities associated with the management of knowledge, particularly in higher education, are worthy of elucidation. We discovered that knowledge management activities at a university in The Gambia were often informal and required the invisible work of faculty. It was through the implicit use of tacit knowledge and epistemic disobedience that faculty were able to build upon a colonized curriculum that denied the presence of other knowledge. However, in the end, faculty were dependent on the power of referents within and without the institution to formalize their knowledge management practices. This work fills an essential gap in the extant literature on how the work of university faculty and managers, when situated within a knowledge management perspective, can contribute to decolonization and foster sustainable development.

“So much invisible work” – the role of special education teachers in Finnish lower secondary schools

“So much invisible work” – the role of special education teachers in Finnish lower secondary schools

The work of composition: Situated articulation of visible and invisible work within patient organisations

Patient organisations (POs) play a significant role in the transformation of contemporary health systems. This article concentrates on the mundane and invisible work that enables and maintains POs, including the contextual inscription of such work and its relational becoming with visible practices. Grounded in ethnographic study within the Russian Multiple Sclerosis Society (RuMSS), I analyse how visible and invisible work are articulated in particular situations. Though this analysis, I bring forth the work of composition – the continuous situated work of putting together a PO, with care for heterogeneity of its visible and invisible practices and without an expectation of a predetermined result. The strategically visible work builds up RuMSS expertise, making it a legitimate mediator between different health actors. Meanwhile, the invisible tactics maintain the internal porosity and flexibility of the PO, allowing its members to escape surveillance and achieve efficacy despite strategic limitations. The articulation of these two streams of work within a given situation is a specific invisible practice performed by the RuMSS members – the composition work. This work requires collective and embodied sensitivity to the effects of making work (in)visible in specific time-spaces or chronotopes, and it manifests a modality of care within POs.