Platform work-lives in the gig economy: Recentering work–family research

IF 3.9 1区 社会学 Q2 MANAGEMENT Gender Work and Organization Pub Date : 2023-11-10 DOI:10.1111/gwao.13087
Al James
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Abstract

Crowdwork platforms have been widely celebrated as challenging gendered labor market inequalities through new digitally mediated possibilities for reconciling work, home, and family. This paper interrogates those claims and explores the wider implications of digital labor platforms for an expansive work–family research agenda stubbornly rooted in formal modes of employment in the “analogue” economy. Based on ethnographic research with women platform workers in the UK (using PeoplePerHour, Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and Copify), the paper asks: what are women crowdworkers' lived experiences of integrating paid work and family relative to formal employment? And what coping tactics have women developed to reduce gendered work–family conflicts on digital labor platforms? In response to these research questions, the paper makes three contributions. First, it offers a critical review of recent commentary to theorize how disruptive innovations by digital labor platforms to recast long-standing definitions of “work”, “workers”, “managers”, and “employers” have served to position platforms and platform workers as somehow outside the analytical gaze of the expansive work–family research agenda. Second, it extends a growing alternative work–family analysis of platform work to examine the kinds of “work–life balance” (WLB) provision available to women crowdworkers in the absence of an employer; and how women's experiences of algorithmically mediated and contradictory work–family outcomes further challenge widespread claims of new platform work–life “flexibilities”. Third, the paper points to exciting and urgent possibilities for advancing and recentering work–family research through new engagements with platforms, algorithmic management, and “independent” platform workers in support of feminist activism and campaigning around WLB.

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打工经济中的平台工作生活:重新定位工作与家庭研究
众包平台被广泛赞誉为通过以数字为媒介的新可能性来协调工作、家庭和家人关系,从而挑战性别劳动力市场的不平等。本文对这些说法进行了质疑,并探讨了数字劳动平台对固执地植根于 "模拟 "经济中正规就业模式的工作-家庭研究议程的广泛影响。基于对英国女性平台工作者(使用 PeoplePerHour、Upwork、Freelancer、Fiverr 和 Copify)的人种学研究,本文提出了以下问题:相对于正规就业,女性众包工作者在整合有偿工作和家庭方面有哪些生活经验?在数字劳动平台上,女性开发了哪些应对策略来减少工作与家庭之间的性别冲突?针对这些研究问题,本文有三方面的贡献。首先,本文对近期的评论文章进行了批判性回顾,从理论上探讨了数字劳动平台的颠覆性创新如何重塑了 "工作"、"工人"、"管理者 "和 "雇主 "的长期定义,从而使平台和平台工人在某种程度上游离于广泛的工作-家庭研究议程的分析视线之外。其次,本文扩展了对平台工作的另类工作-家庭分析,研究了在没有雇主的情况下,女性众包工作者可以获得的 "工作-生活平衡"(WLB)的种类;以及女性如何通过算法中介和矛盾的工作-家庭结果进一步挑战新的平台工作-生活 "灵活性 "的普遍说法。第三,本文指出了通过与平台、算法管理和 "独立 "平台工作者的新接触来推进和重新定位工作-家庭研究的令人兴奋和迫切的可能性,以支持女权主义行动主义和围绕工作-生活的运动。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
11.50
自引率
13.80%
发文量
139
期刊介绍: Gender, Work & Organization is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal. The journal was established in 1994 and is published by John Wiley & Sons. It covers research on the role of gender on the workfloor. In addition to the regular issues, the journal publishes several special issues per year and has new section, Feminist Frontiers,dedicated to contemporary conversations and topics in feminism.
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