Extending the platform debate beyond cities: assessing the scale and scope of platform-mediated childcare work in Switzerland

Platform work is predominantly framed as an urban phenomenon, a presumption that we challenge in this paper. We scraped data from online childcare platforms operating in Switzerland to assess the scale and geographies of platform work. Our paper contributes to the debate on the ambivalent effects of visibilising platform workers in feminised labour market segments. It provides a critical reflection on the potential and limitations of scraping platform data as a critical/feminist method of counter-mapping platformisation. While much remains opaque, our scraping discloses a highly concentrated market dominated by one platform and a surplus workforce, with far more worker than customer profiles. Our roughly 58 000 analysed worker profiles give no indication of platformisation reducing the feminisation of childcare work. However, we find that childcare platforms are not primarily an urban phenomenon: our data disclose only a very weak correlation between population density and prevalence of worker profiles. Thus, we argue that the debate on platformisation needs to reflect the implications of its urban bias.