Digital platforms are becoming important actors in the process of commodification of care, but are still rare studies of its functioning and quality of work that median. The evidence indicates that, while this may facilitate a quick and easy access to job opportunities, the platforms reinforce gender hierarchies and cross-section, favoring the commodification of the work of care, but not through their formalization or professionalization, but through informal and precarious formulas. Although these platforms operate in spain with three different business models (on demand, marketplace and digital agencies), which are contractual situations and conditions of work, various platforms are characterized by reducing the capacity of agency and negotiation of the successful people when we are discussing prices and conditions.

Keywords

Digital platforms, platforms of care, home-workers and care, gender disparities, inequalities cross

Digital care platforms are becoming important actors in the process of commodification of care, but research on how they operate and the quality of the work they mediate is still scarce. Although digital care platforms facilitate quick access to job offers, they reinforce gender and intersectional hierarchies and favour the commodification of care work, but not through its formalisation or professionalisation, but through informal and precarious jobs. These platforms operate in Spain with three different business models (on-demand, marketplace and digital agencies), which generate different labour relations and working conditions; however, all platform models reduce workers' agency to negotiate prices and working conditions.

Key words

Digital labour platforms, care platforms, care and domestic workers, gender inequalities, intersectional inequalities

One of the most important transformations in the world of work in the last decade has been the emergence of digital platforms, which act as intermediaries between the supply and consumption of a wide range of services. The estimates of the international labour organization (ILO) indicates that, in the year 2025 , 43 millions of people working in the european Union (EU) through one or more digital platforms, from more than 500 operating already in the eu. The literature on the impacts of digital platforms in employment is divided between positions optimistic and pessimistic about the growth of formalization or job creation and improvement or aggravation of the working conditions and industrial relations. On the one hand, a discussion of weight is structured around the question about the true nature of labour link between people and workers and the perceived independence and autonomy of these service providers or workers (Fences and Schor, 2020 ). A great deal of work through digital platforms takes place without a labour contract or under the formula of self-employment (Florisson Mandl and, 2018 ). Another axis of analysis is the important potential casualisation of this work because of its informality and lack of transparency in the algorithms of allocation and control of the work done (Berg et al., 2018 ; Graham et al., 2017 ). The employment situation of many workers could be considered unusual platforms in most cases (without a fixed workspace, without employment contract, of short duration and without full-time working hours). These atypical employment relationships lead to work under poorer working conditions and social coverage (Degryse, 2021 Lehdonvirta,; 2018 ; Urzì Brancati et al., 2020 ). And, in this regard, involve a greater challenge for the organization of association and collective bargaining (Johnston, 2020 ).

The academic discussion and political rights on these two issues have focused on masculinizados sectors with a large majority of male workers, such as transport of passengers or home sharing (Uber, Cabify, Glovo, Deliveroo). However, digital platforms are also growing in traditional sectors, highly feminized, such as the services of care and domestic work. Women make up almost half ( 46 %) of the people of platforms in europe, still the majority among workers offline ( 64 %) (Rodríguez-modroño, Pesole y lópez, 2022 (b). Only recently begun to be carried out studies that address the digital working platforms sectional from a gender perspective and gender-sensitive sectors discussed where most people are women (Kambouri, 2022 ; Rani et al., 2022 ). In the context of such research on working platforms in a cross-sectional feminist, are ongoing in recent years several investigations in different countries and regions of the world of digital platforms of care.The care sector and domestic labour is of great interest to the cross-sectional feminist analysis in merging the study of impacts of digital platforms on the social organization of care and domestic employment and care, made mostly by women, many of them migrants (Rodríguez-modroño et al., 2024 Yin,; 2024 ). These care work is a perfect example in order to analyse how the economy as a platform-configure labour relations, markets, and inequalities of gender and cross-section.

The platforms of household chores and care are digital labour platforms who mediate in labour transactions or services related to domestic violence, including, inter alia, cleaning and domestic labour, children, elderly and dependent members. These digital platforms in the field of home care have grown rapidly, particularly in the last decade, as a result of the combination of several factors: the digital processing, the financialisation of the economy, the growth of inequality, privatization of public services, as well as population ageing and social crisis care(Rodríguez-modroño, 2025 ). The ilo estimates that the number of platforms digital labour care increased by more than eight between 2010 and 2020 more than 200 dedicated platforms to household work and care 2023 (ILO, 2021 ). This rapid growth of digital platforms relating to labour care has crucial implications for both the demand and supply of care, as well as to how that govern these platforms. The investigation into the digital platforms in the area of care is still incipient, and is structured on the discussions on access to work and their formalization, working conditions of this work, and their impact on the inequalities and professionalization of services.

In the debate on the role of the platforms to facilitate access to employment to vulnerable populations and on the formalization of this work, literature is organized around two points of view. The first emphasizes the similarities between domestic work and care, historically traditional restricted and devalued, and that was brokered by platforms. This approach argues that, in a sector where women, migrants and racializadas constitute the majority of the workforce, and where the informality and precarious work is the norm, the outbreak of platforms in the sector may represent an opportunity to draw attention to and enhancing domestic workers and care, introducing elements of formalization or further institutionalization of the employment relationship (Poblete et al., 2024 ; Ticona and Mateescu, 2018 ), increasing the visibility of a work that would otherwise be invisible, or providing a better temporary flexibility that could facilitate the reconciliation (Trojansky, 2020 ). These studies question, therefore, that are not supportive platforms at least a formalization selective or increased visibility of a restricted work and precarious (Van Doorn 2017 ).

In this connection, it is suggested that the development and growth of these platforms could help to create higher quality employment, combining flexibility with the formal incorporation into the labour market, providing legal protection, and recognizing the social rights of working people (Huws et al., 2019 Kasliwal,; 2020 ). In countries where female domestic care services are high levels of informality, digital platforms of care would be to drive the register, but without taking guaranteed full access to social rights and protections (Pereyra et al., 2023 ; Poblete et al., 2024 ). So, in sectors such as domestic work and home care, predominantly women, precarious and non-regulated the entry of the digital working platforms can contribute to formalize work practices, professionalize the sector and help workers to take collective action.

In contrast, other recent contributions questioned the benefits of platforms, and highlighted the increase in precarious labour relations through platforms (Rodríguez-modroño, Agenjo y lópez, 2022 a; Mr. Tandon and Rathi, 2022 ). This view holds that the platforms used algorithmic management for quick access to greater labour force and monitor the process of mediation and collection of revenue, limiting their autonomy and reducing its power to negotiate the terms of their services and a fair price for the same(Pulignano et al., 2023 ; Rodríguez-modroño et al., 2024 ). The platforms are seeking to reorganize the market of domestic services and care in accordance with its own commercial interests and for the benefit of their clients, to perpetuate and deepen the conditions generally associated with domestic work and informal care (inter alia, lack of social protection and minimum labour bargaining power, income insecurity, vulnerability to discrimination, opaque rules and/or volatile, and lack of professional development).

This ambi valencia , or even contradiction in the outcome of the various studies should be many times we are comparing platforms operating with very different business models and who are present in countries with different institutional frameworks, care and workers. The platforms are adapted to different industries and institutional settings (Koutsimpogiorgos et al., 2023 ), so that the economy as a platform should not be analysed from a single homogenous model. In particular, care platforms operating with different organizational structures in each country seeking to benefit from the benefits of existing care at the same time, bordering on the labour regulation. Studies are beginning to distinguish the different profiles of platforms in the care sector, which brought together business models and various labour relations (Rodríguez-modroño, 2024 a, 2025 ).

The public system of care has been seriously underfunded since its inception, resulting in the homes continue to rely heavily on the informal care provider. Supported by the existing regulatory framework, these households have had to resort to outsourcing part of care through economic solutions, resulting in the commodification of care through the recruitment of a low-wage labour (mostly women, migrants). In Spain, one in three dependent members hires a care worker. As in other countries, the recruitment of women home carers migrants has become the most important resource to sustain the provision of care, especially for older persons. Traditionally, families were directly caregivers through informal channels, but increasingly resort to private companies, as the traditional employment agencies and, since a few years ago, also a digital platforms (Martínez-buján and Moré, 2024 Rodríguez-modroño,; 2025 ).

In the booming market which is the care sector in Spain, digital platforms are growing rapidly in the past two decades, and particularly since 2014 . The very recent the birth of these platforms in our country, yet have few studies on platforms provide domestic services and care (Blanchard, 2022 Galí,; 2024 Martínez-bujan,; 2024 Rodríguez-modroño,; 2024 b, 2025 ; Rodríguez-modroño et al., 2022 a, 2023 , 2024 ).

The Last mapping care platforms has identified 38 platforms involved in 2024 (Rodríguez-modroño, 2025 ).These platforms can be classified into three broad categories in accordance with its business model, with differentiated impacts in working conditions in terms of access to the work, remuneration, flexibility and means of control (Rodríguez-modroño, 2024 a): platforms on demand (on demand), platforms marketplace and digital agencies. Each model platform offers a different brokering in customer relationships, working conditions and protection. This typology is crucial for understanding if a platform acts as an intermediary weak or strong, according to the level of control over the negotiation of terms and conditions of work and its performance.

• The model on demand offers irregular work, a few hours, regular and occasional. Such platforms as mere sales channel intermediaries that facilitate prompt access to a wide range of domestic work and care and your payment online, in exchange for retaining a commission in each transaction. These platforms enable quick and easy access to income for young women migrants, in its first phase of entry into the country, with little social support networks, and without a work permit or recognition of their education and work experience, in exchange for offer gigs for hours without a contract, with very low incomes, and with a high insecurity. Although the degree of brokering is weak, to avoid incurring a relationship of laboralidad, really control all the information accessible to parties and the negotiations on price and conditions (Rodríguez-modroño et al., 2022 a). In fact, a number of court decisions have recognized the existence of employment relationship in several of these platforms (Rodríguez-modroño, 2024 a). In Addition, the high opacity of these platforms with regard to the existence of contract or the costs and benefits of their services is premeditated, because these companies are interested in providing very little information both for clients such as working people and, above all, try to minimise the decision-making capacity and agency of the workers. It is common for these platforms are penalised with delays or cancellations, agreements with the home away from the platform, or to impose economic sanctions or even the suspension of your profile if its Rate of rejection of proposals for employment is high.
• The second model, marketplace, this is a model based on the subscription monetiza access to information of the profiles, both by clients or plaintiffs of the service of the workers/service providers. In the models on demand and marketplace there is a labour relationship and, therefore, there is no labour rights or social protection. In Addition, when the workers have a contract, as often happened in the case of the platforms marketplace, generally under self-employed, with higher-risk and lower that the protection of employees. The marketplace of care are often used by both young people of spanish nationality, who want to earn some money for the care of children, such as older women who want to supplement their incomes from home with work of care for minors and adults.
• The third model, digital agencies has been developed, particularly in countries with a large informal sector care where the law allows households are direct employers. These platforms operate similarly traditional agencies, in which the family conducted a down payment for services of tracing and brokering of candidates and then a monthly fee for all the administrative procedures. The digital agencies encourage formalization of care through an employment contract from home, offering better working conditions that other platforms, but more precarious than those for carers employed directly by companies or public institutions. For these platforms are often working women migrants are with residence permits and work, and even with dual nationality, which can aspire to more stable contracts, but not outside the care sector. Although, at times also undertake informal agreements without legal backing of workers in irregular administrative status. In general, its business model often avoidance labour intermediation by assuming the role negotiator who would be for the worker (Galí, 2022 ).

Despite these differences in their business models, the platforms is also shared characteristics that make the three types of platforms, are allowing a greater or lesser degree, the expansion of the commodification of the reproductive role through formulas precarious working conditions (Rodríguez Modroño et al., 2024 ). Can be summed up in four large blocks these common features of platforms. Firstly, the platforms use digital technologies to reduce transaction costs of subcontracting work and minimize the relations with the workers, avoiding any contractual link and evading responsibility.

Secondly, the digitization of selection processes, management and control of the party also serves to seize the asymmetries of information between platforms, customers and working population and go restándoles capacity of agency. There is a deliberate opacity in the platforms of their services to both clients and women workers. Although women recognize that platforms allow them to a quick and easy access to minimal income to face difficulties finding other jobs, their remuneration is lower than they would get without the interference of the platform and negotiating them directly. Women lose their bargaining power on their wages and hours and earn less today than when the platforms began to operate in the market, while the cost for users not declined due to the platforms have managed to increase their market share.

Thirdly, through the algorithmic management platforms indirect control is exercised on working people, which focuses on core issues as the implementation of the times, but not on the quality of work that has resorted to. its mere intermediadoras and to avoid incurring laboralidad problems, these platforms do not offer any advice or training for carers, helping to avoid the professionalization of care. The failure to comply with the timetable by female workers can lead to penalties or the temporary or permanent removal of the platform. The use of technology becomes more so, in a form of organization and control of the work in a truly innovative element for the provision of services.

Fourthly, the mechanisms of reputation tend to be structured in one direction: are the clients who qualify, being the only ones who can evaluate and comment on the service you received. To the absence of manager or supervisor joins the isolation of working with a Single application as a channel of communication with the platform and without having relationship between the people themselves workers. It means that the organization and collective action more difficult for these workers, with a consequent decline of individual and collective rights. So, although the platforms argue that their intervention improves the formalization and professionalization of the sector, the evidence that contradicts it. In short, the results achieved in the consideration of the platforms of care agree that continues to be a very precarious, with little social protection and with a major challenge to achieve something basic labour rights.

The first conclusion we can draw from the studies on digital platforms is that, in the current context of social crisis, platforms care offered to families a lower cost and to care, but perpetuated the dynamics of precarization of this work (Blanchard, 2021 Rodríguez-modroño,; 2024 ).The platforms facilitate the commodification of the work of care, but not through their formalization or professionalization, but through formulas informal and precarious, as work gigs without a contract, and at best, through contracts of employment or self-employment. Research shows that, while digital platforms can accelerate access to employment of migrant women, their working conditions, characterized by precarious, low incomes and unpredictable, lack of access to social protection and unemployment benefits, and splintering of labour relations. The platforms cause huge asymmetries of information between the working population, the clients themselves and with a view to increasing their own power and reduce the bargaining position of working people when we are discussing prices and conditions, and accountability.

It also demonstrated how the economy as a platform which fits in perfectly with the reproductive role, in a care sector, characterized by its informality, insecurity and devaluation, with a great job offer women migrants from the Global south. So that when analysing the impact of new technologies or the digitization into care or mercantilizadas reproductive activities, where work is done mainly women migrants and racializadas, various aspects of privilege/oppression in addition to gender, play a central role and should be incorporated in the analysis and design of policies (Van Doorn and Vijay, 2024 Yin,; 2024 ).

Although the expansion of digital platforms is a recent phenomenon and global levels, is taking place in most countries in both north and south rising rapidly, thanks to the ease with which attract funding through rounds of investment, strong in their conception of digital companies and/or social (Rodríguez-modroño, 2025 ). And as the digital platforms are increasing their market share of care, increase their capacity to impose more precarious conditions caregivers, playing an increasingly important role in the reconstitution of the practices of devaluation of work, to accelerate the process of weakening and erosion of the social contract between capital and labour (Van Doorn 2017 ; Rodríguez-modroño et al., 2024 ).

These results demonstrate the need for intervention from the public authorities to reduce the negative impact on the labour market and that the benefits of digitalisation is distributed equally. Recent legislative changes governing the platforms, spanish (Law 12 / 2021 , 28 september, to guarantee labour rights in the area of sharing digital platforms, known as the riders), as europeans (Directive (EU) 2024 / 2831 the european parliament and the council, 23 october 2024 on the improvement of working conditions at work in platforms), are essential advances in the labour protection on an equal footing.

However, the case of digital platforms in the area of care also notes that the regulation of digital platforms should take into account the variety of sectors affected, the diversity of persons who operate through platforms and gender inequality and its intersection with other axes of inequality, incorporating gender transformative policies in all digital policy and regulation, complemented with sectoral measures. For example, in the area of care made in the home has also been a critical step towards improving working conditions of domestic workers, the ratification of the convention 189 ilo conventions, spain has not done so 2022 .

To give effect to this convention, in recent years have passed the royal Decreto-ley 16 / 2022 , 6 september, to improve conditions of labour and Social Security for working people in the service of the household and the Royal Decree 893 / 2024 regulatory, safety and health protection in the area of the service of the family home. This law treats the regime of domestic workers with the rest of the workers and initiates the path to the elimination of discrimination that historically have been suffering among workers of the domestic sector. This new regulatory framework is preventing platforms can precarizar household employment mediated through them, but, for example, stopping the precarization of work or services that offer without using a labour contract, and particularly affecting migrant population in an irregular situation in the country. We Need therefore an ambitious review of the existing rules in the intersection of immigration, labour legislation and policies of equality and care, it will do in all these areas.

Berg, J., Furrer, M., Harmon, E., Rani, U. y Silberman, S. ( 2018 ).Digital labour platforms and the future of work. Towards decent work in the online world.Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Blanchard, O. ( 2021 ),Home care and digital platforms in Spain. Barcelona Digital: Future Society.

Degryse, C. ( 2021 ).Digitalisation of the economy and its impact on labour markets. Brussels: The European Trade Union Institute.

Florisson, R. and Mandl, I. ( 2018 ). Platform work: Types and implications for work and employment — Literature review.Working paper WPEF Eurofound 18004 .

Galí, I. ( 2022 ).The precariousness Precarizar. Barcelona : Centre d ’ Estudis i Recerca Sindicals.

Graham, M., Hjorth, I. and Lehdonvirta, V. ( 2017 ). Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods.Transfer: European review of labour and research, 23 ( 2 ), 135 – 162 .

Hunt, A. and Samman, E. ( 2019 ).Gender and the igg economyLondon: Overseas Development Institute.

Huws, U., Spencer, N. and Coates, M. ( 2019 ).The Platformisation of Work in Europe.Highlights from Research in 13 European Countries.Brussels: Foundation for European Progressive Studies.

Johnston, H. ( 2020 ). Geographies labour in the economy of platforms. Understand the strategies of collective representation in the context of digital work.Journal International labour organization, 139 ( 1 ), 27 - 50 .

Kambouri, N. ( 2022 ). Gendering platform research. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalization, 16 ( 1 ), 14 - 33 .

Kasliwal, R. ( 2020 ).Gender and the gig economy: A qualitative study of gig platforms for women workers.Observer Research Foundation.

Koutsimpogiorgos, N., Frenken, K., and Herrmann, A.M. ( 2023 ). Platform adaptation to regulation: the case of domestic cleaning in Europe.Journal of Industrial Relations, 65 ( 2 ), 156 – 184 .

Lehdonvirta, V. ( 2018 ). Flexibility in the gig economy: Managing time on three online piecework platforms.New Technology, Work and Employment, 33 ( 1 ), 13 – 29 .

Martínez-buján, R. and Moré, P. ( 2024 ), Home care for profit: Intermediary agencies and digital platforms brokering migrant women’s labour in Spain.Current Sociology 0 ( 0 ): 1 - 19 . https :// doi.org/ 10 . 1177 / 00113921241264556 .

Mateescu, A. and Ticona, J. ( 2020 ). Invisible work, visible workers. visibility regimes in online platforms for domestic work. En D. Das Acevedo, ed.,Beyond the algorithm. qualitative insights for Igg work regulation ( 57 – 81 ), Cambridge University Press.

ILO ( 2021 ).World Employment and Social Outlook 2021 : The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work.Geneva: International Labour Office.

Pereyra, F., Poblete, L. and Tizziani, A. ( 2023 ).Digital platforms domestic helpers and working conditions. The case of Argentina.Buenos Aires: ilo.

Poblete, L., Tizziani, A. and Pereyra, F. ( 2024 ). Digital platforms and formalisation. The paid domestic work in Argentina during the pandemic.Latin american profiles 32 ( 63 ), 1 - 29 .

Pulignano, V., Marà, C., Franke, M. and Muszynski, K. ( 2023 ). Informal Employment on Domestic Care Platforms: A Study on the Individualisation of Risk and Unpaid Labour in Mature Market Contexts. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 29 ( 3 ), 323 – 38 .

Rani, U., Castel-Branco, R., Satija, S., & Nayar, M. ( 2022 ). Women, work, and the digital economy.Gender & Development, 30 ( 3 ), 421 – 435 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P. ( 2024 a). A taxonomy of business models of digital care platforms in Spain.Sociology Compass, 18 ( 7 ), and 13243 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P. ( 2024 (b).Gender inequalities in digital platforms. Sevilla : Fundación Centro de Estudios Andalusia.

Rodríguez-modroño, P. ( 2025 ). The platformization and marketization of care: Business models and competitive strategies of care platforms. Competition & Change, 0 ( 0 ), 1 - 19 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P., Agenjo calderón, A., and López, P. ( 2023 ). A Feminist Political Economic Analysis of Platform Capitalism in the Care SectorR.eview of Radical Political Economics, 55 ( 4 ), 629 - 638 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P., Agenjo calderón, A., and López, P. ( 2024 ). A social reproduction analysis of digital care platform work.New Political Economy, 29 ( 4 ), 619 - 627 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P., Agenjo-calderón, A. and López-igual, P. ( 2022 a). Platform work in the domestic and home care sector: new mechanisms of invisibility and exploitation of women migrant workers. Gender & Development, 30 ( 3 ), 619 - 635 .

Rodríguez-modroño, P., Pesole, A. and López-igual, P. ( 2022 (b). Assessing gender inequality in digital labour platforms in Europe.Internet Policy Review, 11 ( 1 ), 1 - 23 .

Mr. Tandon, A., & Rathi, A. ( 2022 ). Sustaining urban labour markets: Situating migration and domestic work in India’s ‘gig’ economy. Environment and Planning A, 56 ( 4 ), 1245 - 1261 .

Ticona, J. and Mateescu, A. ( 2018 ). Trusted strangers. Carework platform’s entrepreneurship in the on-demand economy. New Media and Society, 1 - 21 .

Trojansky, A. ( 2020 ).Towards the “Uber-isation” of Care? Platform work in the sector of longterm home care and its implications for workers’rights. Brussels: European Economic and Social Communities. https :// www.eesc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/qe- 02 - 20 - 092 -en-n.pdf

Urzì Brancati, C., Pesole, A. and Fernandez Macias, E. ( 2020 ).New evidence on platform workers in Europe. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Fences, S. and Schor, J. ( 2020 ). What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Igg Economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 46 ( 16 ), 1 – 16 .

Van Doorn, N. ( 2017 ). Platform labour: on the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the ‘on-demand’ economy. Information, Communication & Society, 20 ( 6 ), 898 - 914 .

Van Doorn, N. ( 2022 ). Platform capitalism ’ s social contract.Internet Policy Review, 11 ( 1 ), 1 - 18 .

Van Doorn, N. and Vijay, D. ( 2024 ). Igg work as migrant work: The platformization of migration infrastructure. Environment and Planning: Economy and Space, 56 ( 4 ), 1129 - 1149 .

Yin, S. ( 2024 ). Situating platform gig economy in the formal subsumption of reproductive labor: Transnational migrant domestic workers and the continuum of exploitation and precarity.Capital & Class, 48 ( 1 ), 119 - 133 .