1. Digital Work-Lives and
Gender Inclusive Growth in
the ‘Sharing’ Economy (?)
Al James
al.james@ncl.ac.uk @Re_AlJames
University of Southampton - 7 Feb 2018
Work/home boundaries in the Digital Economy

2. Sustaining Economies: Gendered Work-
Life Conflict, Struggling with the Juggling
 Shifting temporal and spatial boundaries between
home and work
 Negative experiences of ‘New Economy’: working
longer, harder, to less predictable schedules, more
unsocial hrs
 Same time, increased female labour participation
rates; household life more complex: e.g. more dual
earner, lone-parent households
 Neoliberal attack on social provisioning – transfer of
care down to ‘natural’ level of home (Bakker and Gill
2003) where women assume majority burden of
‘messy and fleshy’ domestic life (Katz 2001)
 Complex, multi-variable juggling act for which
workers have finite time and energy
• Lack of WLB: increased stress, negative effects on
psychological and physical well-being, and
increased family & marital tensions (many studies)

3.  Major causes of work-life conflict
Highly variable workloads over product devt cycles
Need for rapid response to client crises
International work teams in multiple time zones
Maintaining skill sets in dynamic IT sector
 Everyday experiences of work life conflict
interrupted sleep patterns
stress and exhaustion
regular evening and weekend working
relationships with partner / children suffer
working (at home) when feeling unwell
missing out on leisure / hobbies
checking email in hospital close to child birth
 Particular pressures on women with children: identity of ‘a good mother’
invokes an everyday presence and involvement in childrearing absent from
dominant societal expectations ‘a good father’ (see Hardhill and van Loon 2006)
Documenting Everyday Work-Life Conflicts,
High Tech Sector (Highly Gendered)
150 firms, 300 workers,
10 years of research, UK
& Ireland

4. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to give
workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average work
hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace social
support’ for parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal Leave Policies and benefits that
give leave to provide time
for personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
So what can employers do to help?

5. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to give
workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average work
hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace social
support’ for parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal Leave Policies and benefits that
give leave to provide time
for personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
So what can employers do to help?
BUT:
Many employers remain unconvinced –
highly sceptical of WLB ‘business case’
(administrative burden, unfair privileging
select group, lack of supporting evidence)
Limits to managerial ratification (formal vs
informal WLB provision)
Recessionary roll-back of WLB provision
Workers voting with their feet: move to
other firms (better WLB provision); quit
the sector altogether; other women going
freelance, use of online work platforms –
in search of greater work autonomy,
improved WLB, less stress, advancement

6. Enter the ‘Sharing Economy’ (chaotic conception)
‘What is innovative about today’s sharing is that
it is a market form in which strangers—rather
than kin and communities—exchange goods and
services. This contemporary sharing economy
creates new ways of provisioning goods and
services … re-allocating wealth across the “value
chain,” specifically away from “middlemen” and
towards small producers and consumers. In
2011, Time magazine identified collaborative
consumption as one of its 10 ideas that will
change the world’. Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015:
4).
 New disruptive economic model using internet platforms:
access over ownership
 ‘Sharing Economy’ / ‘Collaborative Commons’ / ‘Peer to
Peer Economy’ / ‘Digital On Demand Economy’ / ‘Platform
economy’ / ‘Gig Economy’ / ‘Connected Consumption’
 Multiple circuits: semi-profit, pure profit, redistribution,
sharing

7. Platform Work-Life Possibilities? ‘The
dawn of a new humane era’ (Rifkin, 2014)
‘The optimally efficient state for promoting the general
welfare and represents the ultimate triumph of
capitalism’ (p. 10-11)
Third Industrial Revolution – Internet reduces
marginal cost of production almost to zero (eliminates
virtually all middlemen mark up)
From economy of scarcity to abundance
Unbundling of production from employment
Reduced social inequality
Platforms: ‘Old paradigm of owners and workers, of
sellers and consumers, is beginning to break down.’ (p.
160-1). New class of ‘prosumers’
Result: ‘a more humane and efficient capitalist
market’ (p. 27).
(other commentators more critical, e.g. Robert Reich
‘sharing the scraps’ economy)

8.  FORBES (2015) interview with founder and CEO
of Moonlighting (Jeff Tennery):
 “Mobile Optimized Mothers, or as we call them
M.O.M’s, are fueling the new 1099 shared
economy. Women are empowering themselves,
choosing to work from home and earn a living on
their terms. We’re very honored to help them on
their mission to achieve that balance between
career and life.”
 ‘For professional women, the on-demand
economy is already a godsend… to advance in
their careers or at least stay in the game while
being the kind of parents they want to be’
(Andreasson 2015:2). [!!!]
 See also, Wosskow 2014, ILO 2016
Sickly-Sweet Celebrations of Female Work-Life
Emancipation in the ‘Sharing Economy’

9. FOCUS: Making Visible Female Freelancer
Work-Lives: On-Demand Work Platforms
1.Empowering, liberating effect on WLB c.f.
demands of more formal office work environments?
2.Digital on-demand work disrupts / reinforces
gendered distribution of productive and
reproductive work?
3.‘Employer-provided WLB’ arrangements for
platform workers?
4.Work-life experiences of being managed by
algorithms rather than manager in the flesh?
19 interviews so far (Jan/Feb 2018, 18 women, majority
mothers, 1 single father – PPH, Upwork, Copify, Fiverr,
Taskrabbit, WorkEtc) – mix of full-time freelancers and
platform top-ups (from highly paid, to low paid) – desk
based communications, marketing, business devt, HR,
office support, web, design, graphics
Lack of analysis –
despite women well
represented in UK on-
demand workforce
(see Huws et al. 2016
survey, 52% UK
platform workers)

10. 1. Better Juggling Platform Work, Home and
Family? Absence of Employer Support?
Greater ‘flexibility’ of work widely
acknowledged – strong illness motivation
Benefits of loss of commute
Enabling discrete pockets of work fitted
around care task rhythms (quilts)
But: lack of line manager (none), employer
WLB support (none), ‘it’s all on me’ – no paid
sick leave / holiday leave / pension (‘1 hr
child time = 1 hr lost income’)
Major sources of work-life conflict:
Excessive customer demands post
acceptance (but need to tread carefully)
Regular evening and weekend working
Jackpot jobs demand instant proposals
School holidays as major crunch point

11. 1. Crazy Quilts: Juggling Platform Work, Home and Family
‘My work is always set for the times when she’s already in the bed, so, … it
happened to me twice, actually, that I was supposed to start have a Skype
call set up with [client] for eight o’clock, and my daughter was just playing
up. She didn’t want to go to sleep. My computer is downstairs. Her
bedroom is upstairs. And I was stuck, like, what do I do? Do I go to the
computer with the baby in my arms, and just say, “Okay, [client], I can do
15 minutes later”? So, that kind of situation, it does happen, it’s
frustrating. But there is nothing you can do.’ (female freelancer, PPH, Jan
2018)
‘In the mornings I try not to work. I try and wait to maybe 9am just to set
that precedent as well that I'm not available 24/7. So I do the nursery run,
the school run and then on the days where I work from home… that allows
me to do meetings, phone calls, catch ups. That's what a lot of my
freelance work is. Then it's normally pick up, spend a couple of hours with
my daughter and then it's normally a pocket of two or three hours in the
evening, so from 7pm until 9pm, 7pm until 10pm where I really catch up
and get things done that I couldn't do during normal working hours’.
(female freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

12. Substantial service fees taken by platforms
plus need to set competitive (lower!)
international rates mean longer hours
Variability of workflow (weekly, annual)
promotes overwork (‘make hay while the sun
shines’) – also need for extended family care
networks
Dec / Jan low coincides with expensive
period – but top month becomes target
Autonomy? Work-life challenges of
algorithms and rankings: taking work offline
vs. keeping work credits to be seen in
algorithm search results; emails if
underperform
Aggressive bidding, then passing work on to
other freelancers as coping mechanism
2. Work Autonomy vs Pressures of Overwork
on Platforms
‘This is my income. This
isn't a joke. This is me
paying for my rent. This is
me paying for food, paying
for uniforms, things like
that." I was like, "You
cannot drop my ranking."
How ridiculous is that, that
I'm begging them not to
drop my ranking. But I'm
like, "You can't drop me
out of the algorithm
because people won't find
me and I won't be able to
get any work”’. (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

14. 3. Female Health and Safety in the ‘Gig
Economy’: Maternity Leave, and Female Returners
Lack of paid maternity leave support
(weak: UK statutory only)
Hiding pregnancy from clients
Working close to due date (and much
more so c.f. previous children when
had formal employee status)
Cutting maternity leave very short –
multiple women
Loss of clients from pre-leave
Truncated and regressed career
ladders (amplified in gig economy?)
Wider pattern: 2017 study by GPDQ
platform – mental health issues for
freelance women and newborns –
mothers working within crucial first 6
weeks (n=104)
‘So I started freelancing in 2006
which was when [son] was born,
and I had [daughter] December of
2007. She was supposed to be a
Christmas day baby, so I worked
until probably the 24th
of December,
had [daughter], and then due to
commitments, because at the time I
was doing some freelance work for
an organisation that had a yearly
exhibition… and the exhibition was
in March so technically I didn’t have
any maternity leave [laughs]! I
worked, basically, almost as soon
as I had [daughter]. Because I’d
made commitments to the
organisation. It wasn’t so
horrendous because she slept a lot,
but it was very tiring’. (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

16. 3. Female Health and Safety in the ‘Gig
Economy’: Inappropriate (Male) Buyer Behaviour
‘I actually had a customer last year, I was put off freelancing for a little
while because of this. Often people don't want to communicate via
PeoplePerHour. Often people want to do Skype meetings and phone calls
and things like that. That does mean obviously an exchange of personal
information. I had a customer that knew I got home from work at 5pm,
would ring me at 5pm, I'd be on the phone to him for an hour, an hour and
a half every evening. He knew I had a child. He'd always be calling and I
wouldn't answer. Then I'd get emails straightaway, "Are you not
interested? Shall we not pay you this month?" I found that very
uncomfortable. Also, he was a man, he had my address because my
invoices were there and I didn't feel safe. He also had my mobile number
so I ended up having to block him on my mobile, block him on my
landline. I had to block his texts on my phone as well. Then for some
reason for a few days I was living in paranoia that he was going to send
me a letter or he was going to turn up here. That's awful. No one should
have to feel like that, whether they're male or female’. (female freelancer,
PPH, Jan 2018)

17. Making visible female work-lives in the
‘Sharing Economy’? (Familiar?) Discussion
 Highly varied female worker experiences (and blurring with
freelancer / contractor / PT emp categories) –very few 100% platform
 Some novelty, but strong consistencies with previous work
 Compromise WLB and female freelancers: juggling work, home and
family
 Obfuscatory limits to the ‘Sharing Economy’ label – positive
discourse distracts from negative worker experiences (also a term
workers not using) (c.f. digital on-demand)
 Methodological challenges of researching female freelancers
through platforms (posting interview tasks, being moderated,
deposit payments, limits of university financing!)
 Gendered online labour market inequalities? – experiences of ‘male
returners’?
 Subcontracted capitalism & virtual challenges to collective
organizing

20. Mumpreneur ‘constructed as a
high-achieving, flexible,
creative, multi-tasking
“supermom” who makes use of
digital information and
communication technologies to
run a business from home while
maximizing quality time with her
(biological) children’ (Krueger
2015: 2).
Geographical distribution and
‘spacing’ of jobs, housing and
services within a particular
urban area determine the
working time arrangements and
childcare options actually
available to workers managing
one or more careers from a
fixed residential location (Jarvis
and Pratt 2006: 333)
Emancipatory Work-Life Possibilities in the
‘Sharing Economy’? Digital Mumpreneurs

21. TIME
Magazine
2015

22. Precarity & Poor Pay in the ‘Gig Economy’
‘Lyft, for months, has been the only job I have been able to hang onto, having
been laid off from my other (part time) position late last year. Night after night I
have been behind the wheel trying to break even. So, it's been just Lyft for
months and months and months, and all of what I make goes right back into bills,
with a little bit going in my gas tank. I’m working my ass off’. (Lyft Driver, Colorado
Springs, Sat 16 August 2015)
Been driving around the Twin Cities, MN for the last few days getting a feel of this
Uber thing. I was originally attracted to it by their little ad claiming a person is
guaranteed to make 4k a month driving if you put in 40 hours. I figured that figure
is probably somewhat exaggerated, but if I was to get 3/4ths of that or sometimes
the 4k.. it would be worth it right? How the (#*$ can they possible lie THAT badly
and get away with it. I mean, in three days of about 6 hours each.. I've managed to
make about $14-16 an hour before any expenses. Meaning, Mcdonalds is a better
option. Any grown person with a brain knows that any person working
Independent would have to make $20 an hour for it to be worth it.. and probably
$25 an hour in order to abuse a personal asset like a car in the process. Then the
nerve the company has.. when I’m taking a person on a 40 minute 26 mile journey
to the airport. My pay was about 29 I think.. They take 9 dollars!! That’s literally
nuts. And a trip like that is the best case scenario that you'll get all day. I said to
myself that’s A TON of money this company is making for running an App.
qpcomma1, Wednesday at 6:29 PM. http://uberpeople.net/threads/new-driver-shocked.120159/