In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference.

This article explores the characteristics, experiences, and motivations of men and women who secure work through digital platforms. Drawing on quantitative survey data – the first of its kind – of Australian men (n = 251) and women (n = 253) it finds that the gig economy, much like the wider economy, is highly gender-segregated. Men dominate platforms which specialise in what might be considered traditionally male tasks like transport and women dominate platforms which specialise in more traditional female tasks like caring. The results suggest that the gig economy may be an alternative for women in the creative industries. Men and women are both drawn to the gig economy for income-related reasons, despite a significant proportion of them holding a job outside the gig economy. Flexibility was an important motivator for both genders, but women were more likely than men to report that they did gig work because it ‘fitted with their schedule’, indicating that non-work commitments such as family constrain women more than men. More men than women reported that gig work was effective in generating income.

This study examines gender segregation in the context of the so-called gig economy. In particular, it explores the role that stereotypes about male and female occupations play in sorting men and women into different jobs in an online freelance marketplace. The findings suggest that gender stereotypes are particularly salient in online hiring because employers typically contract for short-term, relatively low-value jobs based on limited information about job applicants. These conditions trigger the use of cognitive shortcuts about intrinsic gender characteristics linked to different skills and occupations. The results corroborate that female candidates are less likely to be hired for male-typed jobs (e.g., software development) but more likely to be hired for female-typed jobs (e.g., writing and translation) than equally qualified male candidates. Further, the study investigates three mechanisms predicted to attenuate the female penalty in male-typed jobs. The penalty is found to be self-reinforcing, as it perpetuates gender imbalances in worker activity across job categories that strengthen the sex typing of occupations.

The gig economy comprises a large portion of the workforce in today’s economy. The gig economy has low barriers to entry, enabling flexible work arrangements and allowing workers to engage in contingent employment, whenever, and in some cases, such as online labor markets, wherever, workers desire. And many of the workers seek and complete work via digital platforms. However, there is a lack of understanding into the participation in such platforms. The growth of the gig economy has been partly attributed to technological advancements that enable flexible work environments. In this study, we consider the role of an alternative driver, economic downturns, and associated financial stressors in the offline economy, for example, unemployment. Our analysis combines data from a leading online labor market and various archival sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We find local economic conditions significantly impact the intensive and extensive margins of labor supply in online labor markets. And such impacts are heterogeneous across different county characteristics. Given the prominence of the gig economy, we believe more research is needed to understand gig-economy participation. It is notable that policy makers recently started to look at related issues, proposing laws to protect the gig workers, such as the recent California Assembly Bill 5.

Drawing on original survey and interview data on platform-based food delivery workers, we deploy an intersectional lens to analyze the ways in which the white working-class women who predominate in this sector of the gig economy interpret their work experience. With a focus on the gender–class nexus, we explore the reasons why these workers, especially mothers and other caregivers, self-select into this sector. These include: scheduling flexibility, which facilitates balancing paid work and family care; the opportunity to use previously unpaid food shopping skills to generate income, a neoliberal form of “wages for housework”; and the emotional rewards of serving elderly and disabled customers who cannot easily shop for themselves. Although these workers embrace the traditional gender division of labor and normative femininity, at the same time they express strong class resentment of both the companies they work for and the class and gender entitlements of their most privileged customers.

Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite their separate origins and different features, we demonstrate in this article how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of current digital media. We use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how communication and expression are both enabled and constrained by new digital systems and new media. In these environments, platform-based services acquire characteristics of infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or reorganized on the logic of platforms. We conclude by underlining the potential of this combined framework for future case studies.

Despite considerable scholarly attention to the proliferation of gig work on digital platforms, research tracing the broad trends of labour relations is scant. Analysing interview and survey data on food-delivery workers in China between 2018 and 2019, this article demonstrates a trend of de-flexibilisation for workers, which contradicts the purported flexibility of platform-mediated work. It is argued that de-flexibilisation is achieved through intertwined labour management tactics, technological engineering, and the cultural normalisation of platform-dependent precarious jobs. Platform companies and third-party staffing agencies have jointly deployed algorithmic systems and communicative techniques to cultivate what we refer to as ‘sticky labour’. The study contributes to the current debate on working in platform capitalism by weighing the compound effects of labour management strategies, social impact of technological engineering of the work process, and the cultural normalisation of platform work.

On-demand labor platforms offer many in-person services, from ride-hailing to childcare. However, scholars have focused on ride-hailing, leading to a model of “Uberization” that entails the informalization of work. We argue that online carework platforms that match nannies and babysitters to families show the limits of this narrative. Based on a discourse analysis of carework platforms and interviews with workers using them, we illustrate that these platforms seek to formalize employment relationships through technologies that increase visibility. We argue that carework platforms are “cultural entrepreneurs” that create and maintain cultural distinctions between populations of workers, and institutionalize those distinctions into platform features. Ultimately, the visibility created by platforms does not realize the formalization of employment relationships, but does serve the interests of platform companies and clients and exacerbate existing inequalities for workers. As one of the first analyses of carework platforms, this study also points to gendered bias in the scholarly literature about the on-demand economy.

This article is directed towards addressing the employment related issues encountered by female workers in the gig economy in the EU. It revolves around analysing ‘the switch’ from the traditional labour market to the platform economy. It subsequently explains, by drawing comparisons, that the issues of gender inequality in the brick and mortar world are still prevalent in world of the digital platform. In fact, new challenges have emerged which are specifically related to the gig economy. Female workers are now affected by the inherent bias of algorithms. Moreover, due to the unequivocal propagation of ‘flexibility’ which is used as a weapon to glorify the gig economy; women are even more likely to be pushed into precarious work. The other prominent issues of gender inequality like the dynamics of intersectionality, the gender pay gap and hiring policies in traditional and digital platforms are also examined. Furthermore, the existing regulatory frameworks addressing these issues are discussed with the possibility of catering to the gender inequality issues in the gig economy through policy development. The article concludes with a reflection on the need for the EU to take immediate and efficacious policy measures in respect of female workers in the gig economy.

Entrepreneurs have become the driving force of China’s economy over the past few decades. With a rapid surge in the growth of digital platforms, and the success of China’s platforms outside China, the aspiration to be entrepreneurial is recognized and celebrated. Increasingly, women are benefitting from this entrepreneurial fever. However, behind the increasing number of emerging women digital entrepreneurs, is the struggle to gain recognition. Drawing on cases studies of female digital startups, the article investigates some of the dilemmas faced when women strive to develop entrepreneurial identities. The article problematizes distinctions between the entrepreneur in a general sense, the creative entrepreneur, and female creative entrepreneurs. Whereas an entrepreneur in China is often conflated with a business owner, the identity of the creative entrepreneur is more precarious and unstable. The article finds that besides the difficulty to sustain a creative-based entrepreneurial identity, the hyper-competitive and masculinist fields of digital entrepreneurship and technical fields, combined with traditional gender roles and family responsibility, results in a devaluation of female entrepreneurship.

The special issue, “Chinese Platforms and Entrepreneurial Labour,” examines entrepreneurial labor and its relationship with the platformization of Chinese society and economy. The introduction to the special issue sums up three key issues pertinent to the broad field of platform entrepreneurial labor: class, power, and gender. It also contextualizes the platforms—Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and TikTok—that are discussed in five articles by authors from China, India, Japan, Australia, and UK.