Women, Work, and the Digital Economy

Volume 30, Issue 3 | November 2022

 
Read the issue blog
As digital technologies are rapidly transforming the world of work, the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the process of digitalisation. It has also exposed and exacerbated inequalities between the global North and South, and along the lines of gender, race, caste, and class.This issue of G&D focuses on women workers and how they navigate and assert themselves in this digital economy. By employing an intersectional lens, the papers and essays examine the multiple vulnerabilities, risks, and precarities – as well as the individual and collective strategies deployed in resisting and reshaping the terms of platform capitalism.

Gender & Development is published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. If you are interested in subscribing to the journal, please visit the Routledge website. (Please note the reduced subscription rates available for low and middle-income countries.)

Below, you can find free access to the Introduction, four articles, and the Resources and Book Reviews sections of the issue.

For free access to all of the articles, visit the Oxfam Policy & Practice website and search using the article title.

Image

Articles

Introduction: Women, work, and the digital economy
Uma Rani, Ruth Castel-Branco, Shivani Satija & Mahima Nayar

Problematising the digital gender gap: invoking decoloniality and intersectionality for inclusive policymaking
Anukriti Dixit & Muneeb Ul Lateef Banday

New challenges for women workers in Brazil facing the wave of Industry 4.0 technologies
Priscila von Dietrich & Mariana Hansen Garcia
 
Navigating the digital informal economy during the COVID-19 pandemic: vignettes of Sri Lankan micro- and small-scale entrepreneurs
Nedha de Silva
 
Transformative digital spaces? Investigating women’s digital mobilities in Pakistan
Hadia Majid & Maryam Mustafa
 
Building agency: women vendors and gendered technology in informal markets in Assam
Pratisha Borborah & Krishna Surjya Das
 
Gendered identities and digital inequalities: an exploration of the lived realities of the transgender community in the Indian digital welfare state
Arushi Raj & Fatima Juned
 
Gendered precarious employment in China's gig economy: exploring women gig drivers’ intersectional vulnerabilities and resistances
Haley Kwan
 
When women enter male-dominated territories in the platform economy: gender inequalities among drivers and riders in Argentina
Ariela Micha, Cecilia Poggi & Francisca Pereyra
 
Food delivery workers in Mexico City: a gender perspective on the gig economy
Laura A. Centeno Maya, Ana Heatley Tejada, Anahí Rodríguez Martínez, Alma Luisa Rodríguez Leal-Isla, Máximo Ernesto Jaramillo-Molina & Roberto Carlos Rivera-González
Platform work in the domestic and home care sector: new mechanisms of invisibility and exploitation of women migrant workers
Paula Rodríguez-Modroño, Astrid Agenjo-Calderón & Purificación López-Igual
 
Sweeping up decent work: paid domestic work and digital platforms in South Africa
Wandile Sibiya & David du Toit
 
Hacking platform capitalism: the case of domestic workers on South Africa’s SweepSouth platform
Shaeera Kalla
 
Gendered labour’s positions of vulnerabilities in digital labour platforms and strategies of resistance: a case study of women workers’ struggle in Urban Company, New Delhi
Dipsita Dhar & Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat
 
Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy
Ambika Tandon & Abhishek Sekharan
 
Gendering platform co-operativism: the rise of women-owned rider co-operatives in Brazil and Spain
Julice Salvagni, Rafael Grohmann & Évilin Matos
 
Leveraging digital technologies to enable women’s co-operatives: experience of national insurance VimoSEWA Co-operative Ltd.
Ruchi Agarwal& Mirai Chatterjee
 

Resources

Here you can find additional materials related to the issue. These are compiled by Mahima Nayar, Anandita Ghosh and Shivani Satija. 

View Resources Section

Book Reviews

Care and Capitalism by Kathleen Lynch. Reviewed by Ritu Diwan

Canibal Capitalism: How our system is devouring democracy, care and the planet - and what we can do about  it by Nancy Fraser. Reviewed by Deborah Eade

Mining, Displacement, and Matriliny in Meghalaya: Gendered Transitions by Bitopi Dutta.  Reviewed by Bhaswati Borgohain