WageIndicator - Women in Gig Work: Olivia Blanchard unpacks the situation of domestic workers globally
Why a focus on domestic workers?
"Domestic work is one of the older occupations in the world. As populations age across the globe, there is a growing reliance on domestic workers to take care of the elderly and dependent. They fulfil an essential role in our societies. This type of work represents a significant source of global employment – according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) research, in 2022 domestic work accounts for 2.3% of employment, which means 1 in 25 employees. Domestic workers account for at least 18% of care workers.
In the context of the gig economy, the US based National Domestic Workers Alliance has referred to them as the original gig workers as they have always had multiple jobs (gigs) and multiple employers and at different locations. They have had to deal with some of the issues now faced by delivery riders and others in the gig economy. These issues are, for instance, unpaid working time, wage theft, low pay, a lack of access to social protection benefits such as paid sick time and health insurance, and more."
The sector has been described as “highly feminised and racialised” – why is this?
"Traditional gender roles have placed women inside the home, taking care of the home and family, and men outside the home, in paid employment. Domestic work and care work has not been valued socially, it has historically been done by women in the family, unpaid, or by other women who are employed to do the work. Racialised and immigrant women are overrepresented in the sector.
For example, in Spain, women who were born abroad make up over 40% of the domestic workers workforce, in contrast to the 11% of foreign-born workers across the overall workforce. Many of these women come from Latin America and have left the care of their own children in the hands of other female relatives back home, a phenomenon called the “global care chains” (women migrate to take care of other women's elderly relatives or children when they go into paid employment, leaving behind the care of their own children and elderly parents in the hands of other female relatives).
In the United States, black and Hispanic women are overrepresented in the domestic workforce. In 2019, the year just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, almost 60% of domestic workers were black, Hispanic or Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI). Meanwhile these same groups represent just 36% of the rest of the workforce. The same happens in other regions, for example, in Latin America where afro descendants and indigenous women are also overrepresented in the domestic work workforce.
Race, class and gender dynamics inform the makeup of the workforce, and also the working conditions and the employer employee relationships and power dynamics. Many domestic workers today still work in the informal economy (paid under the table) and are subjected to abusive working conditions and exploitation."
Domestic workers experience precarious work conditions – how is this so?
"Both historically and and in the present day this is seen as women's work, something they do naturally; they are expected to care for others, the home, out of love. And therefore, socially this doesn't have a monetary value and is still not considered to be a real job, a profession. It is regarded as being unskilled, as something that comes natural to women and is unpaid or low paid.
One of the challenges is that it takes place behind locked doors in the private sphere of the home, so it has been much harder to regulate than work taking place in other workplaces like, say, a factory. While workers have progressively gained rights across the world since the beginning of the last century, domestic workers have been systematically excluded from labour laws and employment policies and it has been only relatively recently that they have acquired more rights and social protections.
The Covid-19 pandemic impacted dramatically on this sector with many domestic workers losing their job overnight due to lockdown restrictions and, given the high levels of informality, many were not covered by social protection systems. Recent evidence suggests that more domestic workers than other employees lost their jobs or saw a dramatic reduction in working hours.
In this regard, the recent ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 189 passed in 2011 is a significant step towards ensuring domestic workers have the same rights and protections as other professionals. The convention has so far been ratified by almost 40 countries."
Why do we need to focus on women's experiences in the gig economy?
"So far, much of the literature on the gig economy has focused on countries in the global north and on a few sectors, mainly ride hailing and transport. Even then, we know little about women's experience working as riders or drivers.
A recent study in Argentina found that female gig workers working as riders and drivers in Buenos Aires work fewer hours and earn less income than men. The research shows how women are less likely to own a motorcycle compared to men, they are less likely to work in the evenings or weekends due to their care responsibilities and they are more likely to turn down a trip or delivery request when they perceive the area is dangerous. As a result they see their ratings affected as platforms, which don't take into account any of these factors, assign higher scores to those who have lots of availability day or night, are able to travel faster and have low service rejection rates.
Precisely for this reason we need to bring a gender perspective into our research on the gig economy. We need more data on how many women (and men) work in the gig economy, on their wages and working conditions. We need to understand how women and men's experiences differ and understand the ways in which platform operational models and algorithmic management might be compounding the structural inequalities found in the traditional labour market offline.
In regard to the domestic work and care sectors, the topic of this webinar, until very recently this sector (like other highly feminised sectors such as beauty services) had also been left out of the literature and regulatory debates on the gig economy despite the fact that platforms and apps have emerged in this field across the world."
What needs to be improved?
"We need more research, more data and we need for both platform operational models and policies and public policy to include an intersectional gender perspective."
Are there examples of success stories?
"In the webinar on 27 October, we will have the chance to listen to two inspiring success stories. One is the story of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in the United States which has done remarkable work in bringing domestic workers rights to the forefront. The NDWA is now working with both platform companies and municipal authorities to guarantee a minimum wage, paid time off and occupational accident insurance.
We will also get to hear about the story of Hogaru in Colombia, a digital platform company that has set out to do things differently to other competitors in the gig economy. Hogaru employs all their workers so that they receive social security with a full wage. They have also designed their matching process in such a way as to minimise discrimination on behalf of clients towards workers. And they have launched a service "Apporta" to facilitate the registration of domestic workers on the social security system and the payment of social security contributions across the country."
The second session of Women in Gig Work in March 2023 will focus on the gendered experiences of online web-based platform work, including on both freelance and microtask platforms. This will be the topic of the Women in Gig Part 2 webinar, scheduled for March 2023.
Olivia Blanchard's background
Olivia has over 15 years' international experience working in research and advocacy across different sectors with a current focus on the impact of technology on society from a gender, intersectional perspective. She has authored several reports on the rise of the gig economy in feminised sectors, including domestic work and care. She has a degree in Political Sciences (Bristol University, UK), training in research methods (London School of Economics), and a postgraduate diploma in Introducing a Gender Perspective into Projects and Public Policies (COLPIS, Barcelona).