CONCEPT
Digital Housekeeping
Wajcman's term for the invisible maintenance labor that keeps digital systems running — managing passwords, updating software, troubleshooting connectivity, organizing the digital environment — and whose gendered distribution extends domestic management into the digital domain.
Digital housekeeping is the unacknowledged labor that modern technological life requires — the continuous work of managing the systems that are supposed to be saving work. It includes password management, software updates, device configuration, subscription tracking, troubleshooting failures, organizing files and accounts, and evaluating which tasks to delegate to which tools. In households where technology is shared, this maintenance work falls disproportionately on women, not because of any technical incapacity but because the gendered distribution of domestic management extends into the digital domain. The person who manages the household schedule also manages the household's digital infrastructure, and this management consumes time that is neither recognized nor compensated.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept extends Wajcman's long-standing analysis of invisible domestic labor into the specific infrastructure of digital life. The pattern it describes follows a structural logic visible in earlier waves of household technology: each new appliance promised to reduce labor but created new labor in the