Centre for Internet and Society

Women in Gig Work

Admin — 2023-07-04T07:00:19Z

Aayush Rathi was a speaker on a panel on domestic work and digital platforms, as part of WageIndicator Foundation’s 5th webinar on women and gig work.

According to the International Labour Organisation, the number of digital labour platforms has multiplied by five in just the last ten years. The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated the digitalisation of the workplace and the expansion of the gig economy across different sectors.

Gig work can offer women opportunities, for example, to enter or re-enter the labour market, earn an income, gain financial independence and flexibility… At the same time, however, many women across the world are encountering significant challenges in finding decent work in the gig economy.

Women in Gig Work is a two-part webinar event. The first webinar on 27 October will focus on domestic work, one of the sectors where digital platforms are expanding across the world. Domestic workers are, according to the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), the “original gig workers”. The sector is characterized for being highly informal, highly feminized and racialised, and for having precarious working conditions.

The second session of Women in Gig Work in March 2023 will focus on women's experiences in online web-based platforms.

For more information click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/women-in-gig-work

As Equals: Frequently Asked Questions

Admin — 2023-07-04T06:54:59Z

Chiara Furtado was a panellist on the ‘As Equals’ series hosted by CNN since 2018 which aims to reveal what systemic gender inequality looks like. Chiara participated in a roundtable on digital harms and gender equality.

For more information, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/as-equals-frequently-asked-questions

Online cab booking | Why finding a cab is a nightmare now

Haripriya Suresh — 2023-07-04T06:34:22Z

Many drivers said the rise in commissions payable to ride-hailing platforms and higher fuel costs, among other expenses, have made it impossible for them to survive in the once-lucrative profession.

Aayush Rathi was quoted in this news article on how corporate policy is leading to difficulties in hailing cabs online:

“Grassroots organisers have indicated a sizeable reduction in fleet sizes of Ola and Uber compared to pre-March 2020. There are numerous possible reasons for this,” said Aayush Rathi, a senior researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society. “One is the cost-of-living crisis in urban India that has solidified the reverse migration of the early Covid days. Then, the so-called moratoriums on loan repayments ended up increasing the total liability on drivers. Many drivers may have sold their cars or defaulted on loan payments.”

Click to read the full article published by Money Control on July 14, 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/money-control-july-14-2022-why-finding-a-cab-is-now-a-nightmare

Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy

Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan — 2023-07-04T06:28:57Z

Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan published an academic paper highlighting the importance of women’s networks of information sharing and care in navigating opaque platform design. The paper is part of an issue of Gender and Development on ‘Women, Work and the Digital Economy’. Gender and Development is one of the few academic journals that priorities practitioners' experiences over theoretical contributions.

Abstract

Women have a long history of organising in the informal economy, despite facing several challenges around geographical dispersion, time poverty, and lack of recognition. These challenges persist in the platform economy which pose similar concerns around precarious irregular work. Recent literature has documented the adoption of traditional and novel strategies to resist platform exploitation, through algorithmic manipulation, public demonstrations and logout strikes, and legal action. This paper explores the gendered realities that shape workers’ organising strategies and demands.

Using protests organised by women beauty workers in India as a case study, we discuss the factors underlying and leading to collectivisation. We find that women’s networks of information sharing and care are instrumental in navigating opaque and inefficient algorithms that fail to determine fully the organisation of work. We further examine the role of informal networks of information sharing in building workers’ identities which are instrumental in collective organising. Finally, we discuss the strategies and forms of organising adopted by women workers in this sector, which resonate with the rich history of organising in the informal economy.

Click to access Ambika Tandon & Abhishek Sekharan 2022 Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy, Gender & Development, 30:3, 687-706, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2022.2130515. Full article here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/taylor-and-francis-gender-and-development-volume-30-2022-ambika-tandon-and-abhishek-sekharan-labouring-on-the-app-agency-and-organisation-of-work-in-the-platform-economy

Women at (gig) work: When financial freedom comes at a cost

Aiswarya Raj — 2023-07-04T06:12:05Z

Chiara Furtado was quoted in a news article on women’s experiences working on ride-hailing and delivery platforms.

Chiara Furtado, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, says since women make up only 0.5 and 1% of the workforce in these two sectors – food delivery and cab-hailing industry – the standardised policies for workers end up being gendered. “Algorithm incentivises longer hours of work, late shifts, peak hours and consecutive rides, which prove to be discriminating against women,” she adds.

Furtado says that findings have revealed that in times of crisis, most safety mechanisms tend to be more restrictive and end up curtailing the freedom and agency of women. Khatoon elucidates Furtado’s point with her own example. “I ride an e-scooter and don’t get orders to spots above a distance of 5 km. This decreases my area and income. Those who can travel 20 km get Rs 100 per ride,” she says.

“Companies claim to offer insurance, but the way they externalize fuel costs, they externalize risk and safety costs too. Apart from general safety, they have other grievances, such as toilets, which have gender underpinnings to it,” says Furtado.

Click to read the full article published in the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-may-14-2023-aiswarya-raj-women-at-gig-work-unruly-customers-job-insecurity-prejudice-against-women-financial-freedom-comes-at-a-cost-for-women-working-as-delivery-executives-cab-drivers

Gig Workers Are Being Stabbed, Beaten, and Abused in India

Varsha Bansal — 2023-07-04T06:04:07Z

An Uber driver was mugged. An Ola driver was beaten and left in a coma. Platform workers say tech companies are doing little to protect them.

Aaysh Rathi, was quoted in a news article on the violence that platform workers face in their line of work. Wired UK published the article, as part of the Pulitzer Centre’s support for reportage on the harms of technological systems.

Rathi says that a responsive grievance mechanism for gig workers is “completely absent” and continues to be “one of the top three demands” that workers have. “The firms are able to provide more responsive services to customers,” he says. “The workers are as important if not more [than customers], and they should be able to extend the same kind of mechanisms, practices, and policies to workers.”

"For one in three people while going to work fearing that they might be robbed today or face physical assault is alarmingly high."

Click to read the full article published in the Pulitzer Center on April 12, 2023

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/wired-uk-april-12-2023-varsha-bansal-gig-workers-are-being-stabbed-beaten-and-abused-india

India’s gig economy drivers face bust in the country’s digital boom

Jagmeet Singh — 2023-07-04T05:02:22Z

Workers on platforms like Uber, Ola and Swiggy deal with blocked accounts, other backlash for speaking out over poor conditions

Aayush Rathi was quoted in a news article published by TechCrunch, a leading publication on technology and business reporting:

“Whenever a worker faces a challenge, it’s very hard for them to get recourse from anywhere. Most of these big platforms are geared toward alleviating customers’ grievances,” said Aayush Rathi, research and programs lead at the Centre for Internet and Society.

To read the full article published by TechCrunch on 25 January 2023, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/tech-crunch-jagmeet-singh-india-gig-workers-problems

Global Perspectives on Women, Work and Digital Labour Platforms

Admin — 2023-07-04T04:43:13Z

Ambika Tandon was a panellist at the launch event for the Global Perspectives on Women, Work and Digital Labour Platforms organized by Digital Future Society on July 13, 2022 on online platform.

The panel discussed the gendered nature of gig work across different global south contexts. The other panellists were Francisca Pereyra, from the Instituto de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, and Uma Rani, from the International Labour Organization.

For more information follow this link.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/global-perspectives-on-women-work-and-digital-labour-platforms

Gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy: Experiences of on-demand beauty workers in India

Abhishek Sekharan, Chiara Furtado and Ambika Tandon — 2023-07-03T16:40:58Z

Abhishek Sekharan, Chiara Furtado, and Ambika Tandon contributed an essay on gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy in India, reflecting on the experiences of women beauty workers who organised India’s first women-led movement of platform workers. The essay has been published as part of an online collection of essays from contributors across the world and has been curated by the Digital Future Society Think Tank (Barcelona, Spain).

In October 2021, women beauty workers from Urban Company (UC), India’s premier platform providing at-home personal services, organised outside their head office in Gurugram to protest their unfair working conditions and lack of social security. Among their demands were the need to reduce and stabilise exorbitant platform commissions, remove arbitrary workforce management practices, reinstate control over working hours, and develop effective grievance redressal and support helplines to aid workers’ safety.

This was a first-of-its-kind resistance led by women workers in India’s booming platform economy. Many of the demands put forth by these workers are reflective of issues that commonly impact women’s labour force participation.

Women face considerable entry barriers in the platform economy, which is reflected in their low participation in ride-hailing and delivery — sectors that engage a majority of the gig workforce (ILO 2021). Instead, women are predominantly employed in historically feminised sectors such as domestic work, healthcare services, beauty work, and online tutoring.

Click here to read the full essay.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/gender-and-collective-bargaining-in-the-platform-economy

Metaphors of Work, from ‘Below’

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon — 2023-07-03T12:29:29Z

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon authored a chapter that describes platforms as more than technological interfaces. The chapter invokes some of the metaphors that gig workers use to make sense of platforms. This chapter was part of an edited volume published by Springer. This chapter forms part of the ‘Labour Futures’ research project, hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society, India, and supported by the Internet Society Foundation.

Various disciplines have produced literature on digital platforms—broadly categorised as technological interfaces enabling the exchange of goods and services — with little consensus on what platforms are and how they impact economic and labour systems. Features that are commonly associated with platforms include their role in increasing efficiency in supply chains, their deployment of cutting-edge technology, and their ability to ‘disrupt’ existing modes of provision of services and goods (Jarrahi & Sutherland, 2019). The use of metaphors and carefully curated taxonomy has been crucial in cementing this idea of the digital platform as a technological layer objectively matching supply and demand (Gillespie, 2017). This chapter seeks to document and understand how workers experience different types of digital platforms, and how workers’ imaginaries of platforms differ from popular and academic conceptions.

Click to read more

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/springer-platformization-and-informality-chapter-metaphors-of-work-from-below

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India: An Evaluation of COVID-19 Relief for Migrants

ankan — 2021-06-03T12:53:57Z

With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all State Governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures.

A majority of workers were dependent on relief provided by NGOs, Civil Society Organizations and individuals or credit via kinship networks. With mounting domestic and international pressures, various relief and welfare schemes were rolled out but they were too little, too late and more often than not characterised by poor implementation.

The aim of this report is to qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The primary focus is on the host states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. 20 in-depth interviews were conducted remotely with migrant workers working in various sectors. Their access to welfare schemes of the Central Government as well as of their host states was ascertained. Emphasis was also laid on their access to healthcare facilities in relation to COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 ailments.

The findings of the report showcase a dismal state of affairs. No one in our sample group received any kind of dry ration or cooked food in a sustained manner and, in the rare occasions when they did, it was woefully inadequate. Of the three states considered, we found that relief distribution was the best in Tamil Nadu followed by Maharashtra and then Haryana. Even the Direct Cash Transfer Scheme of the Central Government under ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ did not reach the migrant workers. Moreover, the migrant workers were apprehensive to report any COVID-19 related symptom due to the draconian treatment that followed therein and the crumbling healthcare sector made it impossible to avail facilities in non-COVID-19 related issues. Lastly, a case has been made for the creation of bottom-level infrastructures to further dialogue between various stakeholders, including associations of migrant workers, for the implementation of schemes and policies which can consolidate migrant workers as a relevant political subject. As migrant workers reel from the impact of the second wave, pushing for on-ground infrastructure and supporting community-based organisations becomes even more urgent.

Click here to read the report authored by Ankan Barman and edited by Ayush Rathi. [PDF, 882 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/migrant-workers-solidarity-network-and-cis-ankan-barman-atmanirbhar-bharat-meets-digital-india-an-evaluation-of-covid-19-relief-for-migrants

Blinkit protests: For gig workers, there is no income security – and little legal recourse

Aditi Surie and Ambika Tandon — 2023-07-04T07:30:52Z

Aditi Surie and Ambika Tandon co-authored an opinion essay on the reasons behind a week-long strike by workers of Blinkit — a popular hyperlocal delivery platform. The protests were in response to changes in Blinkit’s policies that will halve workers’ pay.

The article was published in the Indian Express on April 20, 2023.

By calling themselves 'intermediaries' platforms are reducing workers' incomes, increasing labour insecurity.

Blinkit delivery agents have been on strike for a week as a reaction to changes that will halve their monthly incomes. The protests started after the company changed the basis on which they will get paid, and how much they will get paid. These two factors: The calculation of “wages” and the actual sum of money earned have been at the heart of many gig worker protests over the years. Uber and Ola drivers have protested about big drops in their income over the years. The Blinkit protests last week are a reminder of the kind of problems that are specific to gig-platform workers. Gig-platform worker wages can be changed quickly, and are at the mercy of much larger forces in a platform company like Blinkit.

Despite being labelled self-employed independent contractors by companies, platform workers have little control over their terms of work. They have to get used to platforms dictating how much they earn per task if they want to work. But to change the entire structure of pay has made many workers feel defrauded and lied to. Until these changes, Blinkit used to pay workers through an assured base pay of Rs 25 with incentives on top that nudged workers to work more, faster, or on particular days. As per workers’ accounts, this allowed them to earn Rs 6,000 to 7,000 a week with a degree of certainty, with Rs 1,400 to 1,500 being spent on fuel and other expenses. The base pay had already been reduced last year from Rs 50 despite rising fuel costs and inflation driving up costs of survival. In the current instance of policy change, the company provided no prior information to workers that they would, now, be paid for each kilometre they drive. Platforms like to call this “effort”-based pay. The effort here is how far your motorcycle runs and has little to do with how much real effort it takes to complete a delivery. For Blinkit, which provides grocery delivery within a 2-km radius, the chance for workers to make a secure income is low. Their incomes also depend on the rate for each kilometre ridden. This rate always changes, but most delivery agents do not know when it will change. It can change at any given day or week, or time in the day so that there is no surety on how much a worker will take home any given week.

Incentive-driven payout structures have “gamified” platform work, such that workers are forced to compete for an increasing number of tasks within compressed periods with the promise of bonus pay. These structures are constantly shifting, with workers complaining that companies reduce their task allocations so they are unable to meet their incentives. This level of volatility and uncertainty is a hallmark of taxi and delivery platforms.

To access the full article, log on to Indian Express web page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-aditi-surie-and-ambika-tandon-april-20-2023-blinkit-protests-for-gig-workers-there-is-no-income-security

Labour futures: Intersectional responses to southern digital platform economies

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon — 2021-01-27T08:43:36Z

It is our great pleasure to announce that we are undertaking a two-year research project to comprehensively analyse dominant and emerging sectors in India’s platform economies. The project is funded by a research grant of USD 200,000 from the Internet Society Foundation.

The works emerging from this project will directly inform the ongoing challenges that various stakeholders are encountering in negotiating policy-making for the platform economy. It will attempt to address these challenges by bringing forth a southern and worker-first understanding of the platform economy. In the immediate term, the project will speak to labour law "reforms" underway in India. In the long term, it will engage with historical and forthcoming policy discourse regionally and in India around regulation of e-commerce, trade, competition, and digital platforms.

Provocations

Few recent developments in recent times have attracted as much public and scholarly and policy attention as the platform economy (and it’s various terminologies such as sharing/gig/on-demand economy). While it is widely acknowledged that the platform economy is rapidly growing, very little is known about its size other than monetary estimates of market size. Reliable quantitative data on even some of the fundamental aspects of the platform economy has been unavailable. Platform companies have been notoriously averse to publishing open datasets, and the dispersed nature of the platforms and their workforces has made data collection particularly challenging. Innovative methodologies of data collection are urgent.

Another reason for the increasing attention has been the increasing embeddedness of platforms in urban infrastructures, and their central role in urban life. Several camps building approaches to and analyses of the platform economy have already been set-up across and within disciplines. Economists have offered a narrative of platform work that emphasises efficiency and opportunity, with some discussion of disruption of employment relations. Sociological work has focused on two main topics to explain outcomes for platform work—precarity, which focuses on employment classification and insecure labour, and technological control via algorithms. Both of these suggest exploitative experiences of platform labour.

Despite a global proliferation of digital platforms and their integration within numerous urban operations, much of the examination around these tools has tended to focus on their implementation within northern cities. Qualitative work in southern contexts is growing, and has been rich, but has often used similar analytical lenses as work in the North. This is showcased by the outsized attention paid in scholarship to models of labour platformisation referred to with the monikers ‘Uberisation’ and ‘Uber for X’, which limit the imagination of the platform economy to on-demand work. This research team’s work of platformisation in the domestic work sector in India has shown how such work, while crucial, essentialises a male and techno-centric formulation of the experiences of platform labour. There is an urgent need for a southern-led analytic approach to platform economies, which emphasises labour force intersectionalities, informalities in southern contexts, connections to conventional labour markets economics and regulation, and institutional voids in southern economies.

Hypothesis and research questions

The central hypothesis for this research project is that the generation of systematic macro-level data and robust regulatory documentation will lead to effective policy-making and advocacy. This can achieve secure and gainful labour market outcomes for workers in rapidly digitising southern economies. Achieving these outcomes will require multi-pronged strategies that can create pathways for structural changes. Such strategies include top-down approaches which will support regulatory and legislative policies, and judicial action through evidence-building. We will also focus on the embedding of bottom-up approaches in regulatory processes such as through workers’ organisation and resistance.

The broad research questions for this project are:

What are the determinants and characteristics, historical and emergent, of digital platform entities’ recruitment, workforce management and economic value creation strategies?
What institutional roles, vis-à-vis civil society, markets and the state, are digital platform entities in the global south(s) occupying and seeking to occupy?
What are (a) regulatory, (b) corporate policy and (c) individual/collective labour responses that can generate equitable and gainful outcomes for workers in the digital platform economies?

Research team

The research project will be led by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, along with Amber Sinha. Shayna Robinson, from the Internet Society Foundation, will be supporting our endeavours.

Work with us

The success of this project will be contingent on inter/trans-disciplinary approaches to generate sustainable and gainful work outcomes for the bodies labouring in the platform economies. In addition to stakeholder groups directly engaged in the platform economies, we plan to work with a diverse set of individuals and groups, including public interest technologists, economists, practitioners, labour and technology historians, and designers.

If you are interested in contributing to this project and collaborating on similar agendas, do reach out to either Aayush Rathi (aayush@cis-india.org) or Ambika Tandon (ambika@cis-india.org).

Do keep an eye out on CIS’s website and social media handles for listings of specific work opportunities on this and other projects. One such opportunity is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/labour-futures-intersectional-responses-to-southern-digital-platform-economies