As enterprises that are owned and governed by workers themselves for their mutual benefit, worker cooperatives are currently re-emerging as a promising antidote against precarity and economic dependence in the gig economy. Considering the social and geographic fragmentation of gig workers, it remains unclear whether cooperatives can count on the member commitment necessary to survive. This study investigates whether preference deviation and social disembeddedness stifle the commitment of gig workers to such cooperatives. A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data from members of four interconnected cooperatives in Italy that consist of gig workers in the cultural, ICT and education sectors (n = 425). The results show that members with more deviating preferences and less social embeddedness among fellow members have a lower commitment towards their cooperative. These findings demonstrate the conditions for gig workers’ commitment to cooperatives, being a key factor in cooperative longevity.
Previous research has produced contradictory results about the relationship between sex and perceived job insecurity (JI). The male-breadwinner ideology has been put forward to explain the fact that women often report less JI. In addition, previous research on JI has highlighted the importance of the national socioeconomic context, and gender studies have underlined the need to take gender dimensions into account when studying national socioeconomic contexts. This article contributes to those debates by measuring the effect of sex on JI and the moderating effect of breadwinner status in different groups of countries characterized by homogeneous socioeconomic and gender-related contexts. To do so, the authors use the 2015 EWCS survey, and add macro indicators for the national contexts. The results show that when controlling for breadwinner status, sex has no significant effect regardless of the national context; in addition, breadwinner status moderates the relationship between sex and perceived JI in some national contexts.

