Meeting

The Emerging Global Technology Underclass

Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Ann Wang/Reuters
Speaker
Mary L. Gray

Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research

Presider
Catherine Powell

Adjunct Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations

Women and Foreign Policy Program and Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program

Working for low wages and few benefits, a large but invisible workforce keeps the internet running. Through her research, Mary L. Gray sheds light on the workers—many of them women caring for young children and elders—who support the technology industry and the lack of regulations governing their labor. Mary L. Gray, senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, 2020 MacArthur fellow, and coauthor of the book Ghost Work, discusses what governments and the technology industry can do to address this emerging fault line of inequality.

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