User:Kbraddom/Gig Worker

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Gender and type of work[edit]

Gig work has witnessed similar gendered division that exist within traditional work. The platform economy has particularly attracted female service providers due to the flexibility it offers. For example, 80% of women on DoorDash said that flexibility is the main reason they pursue gig work. One reason for this is that many women need to balance work with familial responsibilities and are therefore more likely than men to participate in gig work due to scheduling reasons. For many women, platform-based food delivery work also provides an opportunity monetize previously unpaid domestic skills like food shopping.

Platform-based work is also highly segregated by gender. Men in the gig economy typically perform traditionally male tasks, most notably transportation. One study found that the most common task for male gig workers was driving, particularly for Uber. Women, on the other hand, tend to perform traditionally female tasks like food shopping, care work, cleaning, and creative jobs like graphic design and writing tasks. Food delivery work has also become dominated by women, with DoorDash now reporting that 58% of their delivery drivers are women.

Despite the advantages of gig work, women also encounter important drawbacks to gig work. Concerns about sexual assault and harassment have become particularly salient for female gig workers. There have been various accounts of sexual harassment claims filed by female Uber drivers. A 2019 safety report released by Uber reported 6,000 incidences of sexual assault from 2017-2018 experienced by both riders and drivers. Despite the prevalence of harassment and assault, platforms do little to protect women from bias, harassment, and violence. Some platforms have implemented preventative measures to protect both customers and workers. Most notably, Uber now requires drivers to complete anti-sexual violence training and their app now includes a 'panic button' feature that connects users to 911 dispatchers, however these measures are widely believed to be insufficient. For instance, women often face drunken and disorderly customers and are left to deal with potentially dangerous individuals on their own with little support from platforms, which provide minimal guidelines for how to respond in dangerous situations. Gender stereotypes and customer bias also mean that customers are more likely to challenge women's decisions, making it difficult for female drivers to defend themselves and advocate for themselves in customer interactions.

The way many platforms are designed also pressures workers, particularly women, to sacrifice their safety in order to maintain their standing on the platform. Platforms like Uber assign work based on the ratings workers receive from customers. Low ratings can result in a worker receiving less work or being removed form the platform entirely, creating an environment where workers often tolerate some level of harassment to avoid a low rating that may jeopardize their earnings.

Assault and harassment also place undue financial burdens on female gig workers. Since gig workers are typically categorized as independent contractors, they are not extended the protections and benefits of traditional employees. For instance, independent contractors are not covered under the provisions of the United States' Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). As a result, if a worker needs to take time off to recover from harassment or assault that they experienced while working on a platform, the financial burden of that recovery time falls entirely on the worker, which means that many women continue to work under conditions that feel unsafe in order to avoid a loss of income.

Gender and pay[edit]

The literature on the gender pay gap in the platform economy is mixed. But many studies show that women continue to earn less than men, even in platform-based economies. The gender pay gap for platform-based work is also typically similar in magnitude to the pay gap observed for sectors outside the gig economy. One analysis of Uber drivers in the United States found that on average, women earned about 7% less than their male counterparts. On Amazon's platform, Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which allows companies to hire people to perform simple online tasks that are difficult to automate, women earned about 10.5% less per hour of work than men, largely because women tended to take breaks between tasks rather than working continuously through a series of tasks to accommodate caregiving responsibilities, particularly young children.

Many workers cite flexibility as a primary reason for choosing to engage in gig work, however that flexibility is subject to some limitations that may have gendered impacts. The primary limitation is that imposed by surge pricing. By tying pricing to demand, surge pricing incentivizes workers to be online during high-traffic or high-demand times. Surge pricing times may conflict with non-work commitments like caregiving responsibilities, creating a trade-off between flexibility and higher earnings.

References

[1] Milkman, Ruth; Elliott-Negri, Luke; Reich, Adam (May 2021). "Gender, Class, and the Gig Economy: The Case of Platform-Based Food Delivery". Critical Sociology. 47 (3): 357–372 – via Sage Journals.