On this International Women’s Day, we want to raise awareness about the situation of women working in the gig economy, as part of our mission of promoting fair and equitable pay and conditions for all platform workers.
According to a recent ILO report, four in ten workers on cloudwork platforms, and one in ten workers on geographically-tethered platforms are women. Digital labour platforms can support women’s empowerment as they provide new opportunities for work, especially in contexts where women have difficulties accessing the labour market. The promise of flexibility offered by gig work might appeal to women who also have to bear care responsibilities. Furthermore, new forms of algorithmic management on digital labour platforms could, theoretically, contribute to eliminating bias and discriminintation in the processes of recruiting workers, allocating tasks, and determining pay, as well as improve work safety, which might benefit women workers. A study of female ride-hailing drivers in Egypt conducted by the team of Fairwork Egypt identified these three elements – new opportunities, flexibility and safety – as the primary reasons women choose to engage in this type of work.
However, in practice, we often see long-standing structural gender inequalities being transferred to, and even further exacerbated, in the gig economy. This is most noticeable in the high levels of gender segregation across sectors. E-hailing and delivery work are disproportionately performed by men, while women are overrepresented in care work and domestic work platforms. The effects of this occupational segregation became particularly visible during the pandemic, when care, domestic and beauty service platforms suspended their services due to national lockdown regulations – leaving their majority women workforce out of any income opportunities.
Even within the same sector, evidence suggests women in the gig economy suffer from a gender pay gap. A 2018 study found a gender pay gap of 7 percent among rideshare drivers in the US. Furthermore, recent research has shown that even in cloudwork platforms, in which work is performed anonymously, there can be gender pay discrepancies. Evidence on freelance work is mixed, “at the global level there is no difference in hourly earnings, while at the country level there is a significant gender pay gap in some cases” (ILO, 2021).
Discrimination can also arise from the algorithmic management systems that govern platform work. While platforms present themselves as neutral intermediaries of job allocation, the social contexts they operate in, as well as hidden biases often embedded in their algorithms, entail that discrimination can happen through and because of them. For instance, ratings and user review systems that many platforms use to manage workers’ performance can lead to bias and discrimination of women workers. These depersonalised management systems can also reinforce existing prejudices, as in the case of female ojek drivers in Indonesia who struggle to find customers on ride-hailing platforms. Furthermore, gig workers are often not adequately protected by existing anti-discrimination laws.
At Fairwork, we believe platforms have a responsibility to address patterns of gender inequality and discrimination in their workforce. Our principle of Fair Management codifies some best practices to protect women, as well as other vulnerable groups:
As researchers, it is important that we question the ways in which existing inequalities can be reproduced, and even deepened by digital labour platforms. Through our ratings and growing transnational network of social just-minded scholars, we hope to continue working towards building a better future of work for all women and men.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
This cookie remains on your computer for 365 days, but you can adjust your preferences at any time by clicking on the "Cookie settings" link in the website footer.
Please note that if you visit the Oxford University website, any cookies you accept there will appear on our site here too, this being a subdomain. To control them, you must change your cookie preferences on the main University website.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
This website uses the following additional cookies from third party websites:
These cookies will remain on your computer for 365 days, but you can edit your preferences at any time through the "Cookie Settings" in the website footer.
Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!
This website uses Google Tags and Google Analytics to collect anonymised information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. Keeping these cookies enabled helps the OII improve our website.
Enabling this option will allow cookies from:
These cookies will remain on your website for 365 days, but you can edit your cookie preferences at any time via the "Cookie Settings" button in the website footer.