ActionAid UK 348d ago

The digital platform economy, or ‘gig economy’, is rapidly evolving around the world, including in countries across the global South. Although it has created new opportunities for paid work for women, the quality of this work often remains highly exploitative, and characterised by low pay, long hours and precarity. Women are penalised for trying to juggle unpaid care work, whilst intersecting forms of discrimination based on class, race, migrant status, and geographical location, are replicated and reinforced. This panel will explore critical questions around what the gig economy means for women's right to decent work and wider economic rights in different regions around the world, the ways in which policies need to be re-shaped and strengthened and platform companies held to account, and how women platform workers are devising new means of organising to defend and claim their rights. The report lays the ground for a forthcoming report by ActionAid, which covers many of the issues and themes addressed during the session. Panel speakers: Uma Rani, International Labour Organisation (ILO) Flora Partenio - Development Alternatives for Women of a New Era (DAWN) Judith Ncube - We-Care Digital Platform Cooperative Project, South Africa Dawn Gearhart - National Domestic Workers Alliance, USA Haley Kwan – University of Hong Kong Rachel Noble – ActionAid (Moderator)