1. Gendered ‘Post-Wage’ Work
Futures: Women in the Online
Gig Economy
Al James
al.james@ncl.ac.uk @Re_AlJames
Queen Mary University of London,
Post-Wage Work Workshop, 29 June 2018

2. Sustaining Economies: Gendered Work-
Life Conflict, Struggling with the Juggling
TRIPLE WHAMMY:
1. Working longer, harder, less predictable schedules
2. Increased female labourforce; more dual earner &
lone-parent households; complex household lives
3. Neoliberal attack on social provisioning – transfer
care down to ‘natural’ level of home (Bakker and Gill
2003) - women assume majority burden
 Complex, gendered, multi-variable juggling act:
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)
150 firms, 300 IT workers,
10 years of research, UK
& Ireland

3. 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 –
(administrative burden, lack of evidence, unfairly
privileging subset of workforce)
Limits to managerial buy-in
Recessionary roll-back of WLB provision
Female workers voting with their feet: move to
other firms (better WLB provision); quit the sector;
other women turn to online work platforms – in
search of greater work autonomy, improved WLB,
less stress

4. Platform Work-Life Possibilities? ‘The
dawn of a new humane era’ (Rifkin, 2014)
Third Industrial Revolution – Internet reduces
marginal cost of production almost to zero
(eliminates middlemen mark up)
‘The optimally efficient state for promoting the
general welfare and represents the ultimate
triumph of capitalism’ (p. 10-11)
Unbundling of production from employment
Result: ‘a more humane and efficient capitalist
market’ (p. 27).

5. On-Demand Gig Work Platforms Explained:
Challenging Employer-Employee Wage Relations
Online labour markets: image of 24/7 on–demand digital labour, instant
availability through our mobile phone screens
Requesters post discrete job tasks / gigs / HITs on platform
Taskers choose which work want to do, bid for jobs
Platform app matches services buyers with worker offers (mediated by
algorithms and customer feedback scores); buyer chooses bid to accept
Platforms eschew any responsibility as ‘employers’ – are ‘tech companies’
Taskers identified as ‘self-employed’ ‘independent contractors’ (hence,
lack of employer-provided work-life support, e.g. sick pay, holiday pay,
maternity pay, pension pay) cf. recent lawsuits (‘dependent contractors’,
major power asymmetries)
Pay deposited in taskers’ platform account; requests made for release
(often with withdrawal fee, and currency conversion fee). No minimum wage

6.  FORBES (2015) interview with founder and CEO of
Moonlighting (Jeff Tennery):
 “Mobile Optimized Mothers, or as we call
them M.O.M’s… 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). [!!!]
 Also, Wosskow 2014, ILO 2016 – but few studies
Sickly-Sweet Celebrations of Female Work-Life
Emancipation in the ‘Platform Economy’

7. RESEARCH FOCUS: (Invisible) Female
Returners Using On-Demand Work Platforms
1.Empowering, WLB liberating effect? c.f. demands
formal office work environments?
2.‘Employer-provided’ WLB arrangements on
platforms which eschew employer label?
3. Experiences of / strategies for reducing precarity
as ‘dependent contractors’?
4.Work-life experiences of being managed by
algorithms cf. manager in the flesh?
35 interviews (Jan-June 2018, majority mothers – PPH,
Upwork, Copify, Fiverr, Taskrabbit, TimeEtc) – mix of full-
time freelancers and platform top-ups (from highly paid, to
low paid) – white collar desk based work from home:
communications, marketing, business devt, HR, office
support, web, design, graphics – majority mothers
Lack of analysis –
despite women well
represented in UK on-
demand workforce
(see Huws et al. 2016
survey, 52% UK
platform workers)

8. 1. Women in the Online On-Demand Platform
Economy: Multiple Drivers / Motivations
Seeking greater ‘flexibility’ of work
Bad managers and lack of WLB support
Denied request for flexible working
Demoted in previous role after childbirth
Illness (personal and child)
Search for reduced commute
Better fit work with husband’s schedule
Lack of local employment opportunities
Platform entry / shifts in platform portfolio
commonly tied to key events in child’s
lifecourse (childbirth, nursery start, school
start)
‘Platforms are not looking to provide
inclusive support for women with children,
they are just exploiting a commercial
opportunity, and a lack of support for
mothers.’

9. 2. New Female Work-Life Flexibilities? /
Emancipatory Post-Wage Work Futures?
Greater ‘flexibility’ of work (cf. previous jobs)
Better enabling better fit: pockets of work
around care tasks
Greater sense of self-esteem for female
returners after career break, truncated CV and
some failed interviews (lower barriers to entry)
But: lack of line manager + employer support:
‘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:
Regular evening and weekend working
Jackpot jobs demand instant proposals
Excessive customer demands
Servicing overseas clients in real time
 Variable income flows (and non-payment)
 Need to get out of ‘monthly wage’ mindset

10. 24/7 Availability of Atomised ‘Digital Labour’?
‘My work is always set for the times when she’s already in the bed,
but … it happened to me twice, actually, that I was supposed to start
have a Skype call set up with [client] for 8 o’clock, and my daughter
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”?... there is nothing you can do.’ (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)
‘In the mornings I try not to work… 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… meetings, phone calls, catch ups. 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’. (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

11. 3. Female Health and Safety in the ‘Gig
Economy’: New Forms of Precarity
LOWER / NO maternity pay for female
freelancers
Hiding pregnancy from clients
Working close to due date (c.f.
pregnancies with formal employee
status)
Cutting maternity leave short
Loss of clients
Platforms as career treadmill rather
than escalator
 2017 study 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… technically
I didn’t have any maternity
leave [laughs]! I worked,
basically, almost as soon as I
had [daughter]… It wasn’t so
horrendous because she slept
a lot, but it was very tiring’.
(female freelancer, PPH, Jan
2018)

12. 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… would ring me at 5pm, 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 … I was living in
paranoia that he was going to turn up here. That's awful. No
one should have to feel like that’. (female freelancer, PPH, Jan
2018)

13.  Autonomy? C.f. managed by algorithms
rooted in customer feedback scores
 Upwork Work Tracker tool (key strokes,
mouse movement, webcam screen caps)
 Taking work offline vs. dangers of non-
payment + not being seen in algorithm
 Customer feedback as reputational
capital: biting tongue, not requesting
payments to disable, constraints on post-
divorce surname change
 Hefty service fees taken by platforms,
need to set competitive (low!) rates 
longer work hours
 Variable workflow and income precarity
promote overwork (‘while the sun
shines’)
4. Post-Wage Worker Autonomy? vs
Algorithms, Surveillance, Platform Overwork
‘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)

16. Female Returners in the Online Gig Economy:
Platforms as a ‘Godsend’?
 From ‘Digital Labour’ to workers’ experiences of
being used as labour (beyond public facing Uber, etc)
 Inseparability from wider networks of social
reproduction which enable platform service provision
(platforms not remunerating this despite hefty fees)
 Worker search for work-family flexibility, but lack of
‘employer’ support (individualised ‘solutions’), new
forms of precarity
 Combining gig work with PT emp (few 100% platform)
– income portfolios to reduce precarity (especially
around maternity leave)
 Compromise WLB - most female freelancers still
doing majority childcare (no major cultural shift)
 Gendered drivers of female participation in online
platforms – care deficit, female labour market
exclusions around childcare
 Gendered constraints on women’s abilities to
compete for work on on-demand work platforms

17. Effecting Positive Change? Suggestions from
Female Platform Workers
Bring back the support desk and make it much more accessible
Fairer / capped pricing structures
List 3 most recent / top reviews rather than all (to lessen effect of bad reviews)
Stricter monitoring (and exclusion) of bad buyers
Female managed platforms