AAG April 2018: Gendered Digital Work-Lives: Juggling Gig Work and Mothering This paper emerges from feminist economic geography debates around social reproduction and the future of work in the so-called ‘sharing economy’ or ‘gig economy’. Within this framework, it documents the lived experiences of female returners with young families juggling gig work with the messy and fleshy everyday activities of social reproduction, in ways that potentially disrupt (versus reinforce) stubborn gendered labour market inequalities. The analysis is developed through fieldwork with women using popular online jobs platforms (TaskRabbit, Upwork, PeoplePerHour) in two UK cities (Leeds and Manchester) which are actively positioning themselves as ‘Sharing Cities’. Despite widespread claims surrounding female emancipatory work-life possibilities (‘mumpreneurship’) enabled by the gig economy, supporting evidence is limited. In short, we know relatively little about the everyday work-lives of women trying to make a living using online work platforms – not least, the much heralded ‘emancipatory’ experiences of female digital workers seeking to reconcile work, home and family, and to negotiate better labour market outcomes via digital work platforms relative to ‘mainstream’ employers. Reinforcing these problems, the expansive work-life balance research literature is limited in its engagement with the Gig Economy. Rather, most WLB studies focus on the challenges of juggling work, home and family amongst employees in ‘standard’ workplaces governed by HR managers; rather than the diversity of ‘alternative’ workspaces occupied by gig workers, whose abilities to reconcile competing activities of work, home and family as ‘dependent contractors’ are governed by digital algorithms and the work allocation models built into them by platform developers. In so doing, this paper brings debates around mothering into new productive conversation with labour geography and digital economies.

1. Gendered Digital Work-Lives:
Juggling Online Gig Work
and Mothering
Al James
al.james@ncl.ac.uk @Re_AlJames
American Association of Geographers,
New Orleans, 13 April 2018

2. Sustaining Economies: Gendered Work-
Life Conflict, Struggling with the Juggling
TRIPLE WHAMMY:
1. Working longer, harder, less predictable schedules
2. Increased female labourforce; more dual earner &
lone-parent households; complex household lives
3. Neoliberal attack on social provisioning – transfer
care down to ‘natural’ level of home (Bakker and Gill
2003) - women assume majority burden
§ Complex, multi-variable juggling act: workers have
finite time and energy
• Lack of WLB: increased stress, negative effects on
psychological and physical well-being, and
increased family & marital tensions (many studies)
150 firms, 300 IT workers,
10 years of research, UK
& Ireland

3. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to
give workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average
work hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child
Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace
social support’ for
parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal
Leave
Policies and benefits
that give leave to
provide time for
personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
So what can employers do to help?
BUT:
Many employers remain unconvinced –
(administrative burden, lack of evidence)
Limits to managerial buy-in
Recessionary roll-back of WLB provision
Female workers voting with their feet: move to
other firms (better WLB provision); quit the sector;
other women turn to online work platforms – in
search of greater work autonomy, improved WLB,
less stress

4. Platform Work-Life Possibilities? ‘The
dawn of a new humane era’ (Rifkin, 2014)
nThird Industrial Revolution – Internet reduces
marginal cost of production almost to zero
(eliminates middlemen mark up)
n‘The optimally efficient state for promoting the
general welfare and represents the ultimate
triumph of capitalism’ (p. 10-11)
nUnbundling of production from employment
nResult: ‘a more humane and efficient capitalist
market’ (p. 27).

5. § FORBES (2015) interview with founder and CEO of
Moonlighting (Jeff Tennery):
§ “Mobile Optimized Mothers, or as we call
them M.O.M’s… are empowering
themselves, choosing to work from home
and earn a living on their terms. We’re very
honored to help them on their mission to
achieve that balance between career and
life.”
§ ‘For professional women, the on-demand
economy is already a godsend… to advance
in their careers or at least stay in the game
while being the kind of parents they want to
be’ (Andreasson 2015:2). [!!!]
§ See also, Wosskow 2014, ILO 2016
Sickly-Sweet Celebrations of Female Work-Life
Emancipation in the ‘Platform Economy’

6. RESEARCH FOCUS: Female Returners Using
On-Demand Work Platforms
1.Empowering, WLB liberating effect? c.f. demands
formal office work environments?
2.Disrupting uneven gender distribution of ‘life’s
work’?
3.‘Employer-provided WLB’ arrangements on
platforms?
4.Work-life experiences of being managed by
algorithms cf. manager in the flesh?
26 interviews (Jan-March 2018, majority mothers – PPH,
Upwork, Copify, Fiverr, Taskrabbit, WorkEtc) – mix of full-
time freelancers and platform top-ups (from highly paid, to
low paid) – desk based communications, marketing,
business devt, HR, office support, web, design, graphics –
majority mothers
Lack of analysis –
despite women well
represented in UK on-
demand workforce
(see Huws et al. 2016
survey, 52% UK
platform workers)

7. 1. Better Juggling Platform Work, Home and
Family? Absence of Employer Support?
nGreater ‘flexibility’ of work widely
identified (cf. previous jobs; also, illness)
nBenefits of reduced commute
nEnabling pockets work around care tasks
nBut: lack of line manager + employer
support: ‘it’s all on me’ – no paid sick leave /
holiday leave / pension (‘1 hr child time = 1
hr lost income’)
nMajor sources of work-life conflict:
nRegular evening and weekend working
nJackpot jobs demand instant proposals
nExcessive customer demands

8. 1. Juggling Platform Work & Mothering
‘My work is always set for the times when she’s already in the bed,
but … it happened to me twice, actually, that I was supposed to start
have a Skype call set up with [client] for 8 o’clock, and my daughter
didn’t want to go to sleep. My computer is downstairs. Her bedroom
is upstairs. And I was stuck, like, what do I do? Do I go to the
computer with the baby in my arms, and just say, “Okay, [client], I
can do 15 minutes later”?... there is nothing you can do.’ (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)
‘In the mornings I try not to work… just to set that precedent as well
that I'm not available 24/7. So I do the nursery run, the school run
and then… meetings, phone calls, catch ups. Then it's normally
pick up, spend a couple of hours with my daughter and then it's
normally a pocket of two or three hours in the evening, so from 7pm
until 9pm, 7pm until 10pm where I really catch up’. (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

9. 2. Female Health and Safety in the ‘Gig
Economy’: Maternity Leave, and Female Returners
nLOWER / NO maternity pay for female
freelancers
nHiding pregnancy from clients
nWorking close to due date (c.f.
pregnancies with formal employee
status)
nCutting maternity leave short
nLoss of clients
nTruncated / regressed career ladders
n 2017 study GPDQ platform – mental
health issues for freelance women and
newborns – mothers working within
crucial first 6 weeks (n=104)
‘So I started freelancing in
2006 which was when [son]
was born, and I had [daughter]
December of 2007. She was
supposed to be a Christmas
day baby, so I worked until
probably the 24th of December,
had [daughter], and then due
to commitments… technically
I didn’t have any maternity
leave [laughs]! I worked,
basically, almost as soon as I
had [daughter]… It wasn’t so
horrendous because she slept
a lot, but it was very tiring’.
(female freelancer, PPH, Jan
2018)

10. 2. Female Health and Safety in the ‘Gig
Economy’: Inappropriate (Male) Buyer Behaviour
‘I actually had a customer last year, I was put off freelancing for
a little while because of this… would ring me at 5pm, for an
hour, an hour and a half every evening. He knew I had a child.
He'd always be calling and I wouldn't answer. Then I'd get
emails straightaway, "Are you not interested? Shall we not pay
you this month?" I found that very uncomfortable. Also, he was
a man, he had my address because my invoices were there and
I didn't feel safe. He also had my mobile number so I ended up
having to block him on my mobile, block him on my landline. I
had to block his texts on my phone as well … I was living in
paranoia that he was going to turn up here. That's awful. No
one should have to feel like that’. (female freelancer, PPH, Jan
2018)

11. nSubstantial service fees taken by
platforms, need to set competitive (lower!)
rates à longer work hours
nVariability of workflow promotes overwork
(‘while the sun shines’)
nAutonomy? being managed by algorithms
nTaking work offline vs. being seen in
algorithm
nFrequent crises for female freelancers
around school vacations (+ Dec/Jan work
low)
3. Greater Female Worker Autonomy vs
Pressures of Overwork on Platforms
‘This is my income. This
isn't a joke. This is me
paying for my rent. This is
me paying for food, paying
for uniforms, things like
that." I was like, "You
cannot drop my ranking."
How ridiculous is that, that
I'm begging them not to
drop my ranking. But I'm
like, "You can't drop me
out of the algorithm
because people won't find
me and I won't be able to
get any work”’. (female
freelancer, PPH, Jan 2018)

13. Female Returners in the ‘Platform Economy’:
A (Familiar) Discussion
n Search for work-family flexibility - major
pull – but lack of ‘employer’ support
n Highly varied female gig worker
experiences (and blurring with PT emp)
– very few 100% platform
n Compromise WLB: some greater spatial
flexibility (work from home)
n BUT most female freelancers still doing
majority childcare
n Major issues around female health and
safety – esp. maternity leave
n Gendered labour market inequalities for
female returners reinscribed online?