EXTENDED SUMMARY

After the 2008 global financial crisis, unemployment and insecurity have become massive, and the number of participants in labor platforms has gradually increased. The possibilities of a working model in which the current service production in both the services sector and the manufacturing sector is divided into very small tasks and can be employed only when needed, according to demand, and the number of workers increases rapidly, is expanding with the spread of digital labor platforms. Technological developments that make it possible to pay only for the product of the work (piece rate pay) and to work at home in the services sector reinforce the old tendencies such as the home being a workplace. Thus, since the 1970s, digital labor platforms have led to the emergence of new forms of insecure work which can be seen as the extreme forms of flexible employment as demanded by capital, and which includes millions of “non-workers” who lack the support of any kind of collective regulatory system.

We witness that inequality based on asymmetrical power relations emerges as a feature rather than an error in digital labor platforms, where almost all the risks arising from labor relations are imposed on the worker. However, digital labor platforms were described as “an ideal democratic space free from historical, social and physical constraints, where everyone can participate equally”. Platform work was seen as a way to overcome the structural inequalities and limitations that women face in the traditional labor market. However, studies examining digital labor platforms from a gender perspective clearly show that persistent inequalities seen in the traditional labor market are also transferred to digital labor platforms.

In the article, I tried to examine how and why these reflections occur based on the analysis of the work performed by web-based labor platforms that mediate remote and online fulfillment of the entire work process using digital interfaces, from the first instruction to the final transmission of results and their evaluation. While doing this, I primarily focused on the reasons for the rise of digital labor platforms and the sources of insecurity in these platforms.

I analyze the reasons for women’s participation in digital labor platforms since this subject strongly reflects the ways in which digital labor platforms are connected to traditional labor market.

Then, I examined whether or to what extent the low labor force participation, difficulty in accessing employment, occupational segregation, and gender wage gap that women encounter in the traditional labor market in all countries, albeit to varying degrees, are reflected in the online market, based on research and literature on the subject. As a result of this research, I reached the following conclusions.

Established gender-based inequalities, clear separation of production and reproduction, and flexible employment patterns severely limit women’s access to resources that enable them to systematically participate in broader macroeconomic processes. This situation causes women’s employment to be low in the traditional labor market, while women entering the labor market concentrate on low-paid, insecure, and temporary jobs. While the social inequalities that women are exposed to and their insecure employment histories shape digital labor platform works, digital labor platforms also reproduce the gender inequalities pointed out.

Since digital labor platforms are built on the use of the internet and digital tools, digital inequalities determine who will or will not take part in this market. Therefore, inequality and gender gap in the adoption, access and use of information and communication technologies are important factors that determine the nature of women’s employment and female employment rates in the online labor market. The most visible aspect of this is that the number of women participating in employment is lower than men in the online labor market, as in the traditional labor market. Despite this, women’s participation in these platforms is increasing in developed and developing countries. Why do women participate in digital labor platforms? The reasons for joining the platform can be quite different for the workers who supply their labor through digital labor platforms, even if they work on the same platforms. Many studies at the global and national level reveal that the main reason for joining the digital labor platform for men and women is to provide “main income” or “additional income”. Compared to women, it is seen that the motivation of men who prefer digital labor platforms is to increase their income from traditional jobs or to compensate for the low income. Despite that, women are more likely than men to be dependent on their income from platform work. This situation reveals that women’s participation in the platform work is both closely affected by the limited employment opportunities in the traditional labor market, and the result of the search for an additional source of income used to compensate low-income earned from part-time and precarious jobs.

One of the most important reasons for women’s participation in the digital labor platform, unlike men, is that the platform allows them to work remotely and at home while fulfilling care responsibilities imposed on women in terms of gender. As seen in many examples, working on digital labor platforms does not reflect a choice especially for women living in households with family members (children, sick, disabled) in need of care, but it seems to be only and most appropriate way under the conditions of the high care costs and limited public care services.

As is the case in many working models combining unpaid care and housework, which must be done in an unpredictable and uninterrupted way, compared to men women find themselves disadvantaged in various ways, from their participation in the platform work to their earnings and the jobs they concentrate on the platforms. Because women must adapt unpaid care and housework, which requires immediate response and are inflexible in this sense, to the workflow. Moreover, they experience a time-related conflict and pressure arising from the responsibilities imposed by multiple roles such as being a mother, wife and employee of two jobs at the same time. Women’s free time (including bedtime) and time devoted to paid work is constantly interrupted and fragmented by unpaid housework and childcare. Time crunch and intermittent work prevent women from choosing long-term complex jobs that can earn good wages, limiting the time needed to share information and seek advice with other platform workers. In fact, once women agree to run platform jobs alongside care work, they are forced to accept worse conditions, lower wages, and less autonomy than their counterparts. Studies on self-employed platforms show that the gender-based occupational segregation and wage gap seen in the traditional labor market is almost reproduced, especially in digital labor platforms that cover higher-paying and skilled jobs. For this reason, we can say that digital labor platforms that are presented as genderless and neutral reproduce the social norms that form the basis of the gender-based division of labor, and both reinforce and strengthen the gender-based inequalities seen in the traditional labor market.