Gendering Digitalization: Technology Change in Feminized Supermarket Work

ABSTRACT

Digitalization is re‐shaping the way work is organized, yet processes of digitalization have largely been examined in male‐dominated workplace contexts like manufacturing and logistics, often with little reference to gender dynamics. This paper explores how workers experience digitalization in the context of a female‐dominated occupation, that of supermarket checkout operators and cashiers. It examines whether gender inequality shapes employee experiences of digitalization, using a multi‐level conception of gender as a social structure that integrates gendered macro structures, interactions and individual experiences. To conduct this multi‐layered analysis, the paper uses a mixed‐methods approach that combines data from stakeholder interviews, a national survey of retail workers and workplace observations of a supermarket. We build on existing scholarship of gender, technology, and work to show that existing structural inequalities in feminized work are reproduced in processes of digitalization in subtle ways, even where there are few visible individual differences in the working experiences of women and men in feminized contexts, arguing that invisibility acts as a mechanism for the perpetuation of gender inequality in times of change.