Gendered digital housekeeping and invisible care labor in platformed higher education

As higher education continues to undergo rapid digital transformation - particularly since hybrid teaching became the routine during and after the pandemic; Learning Management Systems such as Canvas and Blackboard, communication tools like Teams and WhatsApp, and video platforms including Zoom and Tencent Meeting have become embedded in the everyday infrastructure of academic work. Much of the existing literature on platformed higher education focuses on macro-level processes such as datafication, managerial oversight, and neoliberal audit culture while far less attention has been paid to the embodied, routine practices that structure daily academic life. This article adopts a sociological perspective to examine how platform architectures generate fragmented forms of invisible care labor: routine technical maintenance, around-the-clock responsiveness to student queries, and screen-mediated emotional labor. Although essential to the functioning of digital teaching environments, these forms of labor remain largely unrecognized in formal evaluation systems and exhibit a distinctly gendered pattern. Women scholars disproportionately assume responsibility for repairing gaps in digital infrastructures, easing student anxiety, and sustaining online engagement. By analyzing how audit-oriented evaluation regimes fail to register this labor, the article illuminates the tension between metric-driven assessment and an ethics of care. Drawing on debates surrounding right-to-disconnect policies and gender-inclusive design, it proposes governance pathways that make digital care labor more visible and support more equitable and sustainable institutional arrangements.