29 January 2025 | 3 min read

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Gig Worker

A Social Reproduction Perspective on Value Generation in the Platform Economy

By Anuradha Ganapathy and Nandini Chami

Feminist critiques of capitalism have always fore-grounded the ways in which forms of accumulation are parasitic on the unpaid, ‘reproductive’ labor of women. Yet, how does the intermediation of platforms further complicate this picture? In their new paper, Anuradha Ganapathy, Nandini Chami, and Sonakshi Agarwal creatively extend Social Reproduction Theory to account for the subterranean gender dynamics and political economy of gig work. Here we caught up with some of the authors to learn more about their findings.

Anuradha Ganapathy and Nandini Chami speak to Datasyn about their recently launched research study for IT for Change that brings a reproductive lens to analyzing value creation in the platform economy. Rooted in an in-depth empirical exploration of the subjective experiences of 19 women and men gig workers across ride-hailing, food delivery, salon services, and home repair sectors in India, their paper demonstrates how the lens of social reproduction theory can shed new light on the workings of platform capitalism and sharpen our policy and political actions to reclaim feminist futures of work.

The paper is accessible here.

Q1. What can the prism of social reproduction theory reveal to us about the workings of platform capitalism? What were some of the a-ha insights from your research?

Anuradha: I think the prism of social reproduction helps us advance thinking about platform labor relations beyond the narrow zone of waged work and algorithmic managerial control, and open up the space to develop and engage with a more expansive understanding of labor and value. Personally, for me, the gigification of worker households was one of the most interesting findings, because it allowed us to think about the collective dispossession engendered by platform capitalism, and also the durability of gender in shaping value.

Nandini: The ‘a-ha’ insight is reflected in our title–the unbearable lightness/alienation that is the gig worker predicament, arising in the process of digital labor platforms selectively embedding themselves in the traditional sphere of informalized labor relations in order to extract surplus value from the reproductive realm. We observed three strategies of such surplus extraction from the sphere of social reproduction. One, a regime of flexploitation, where for the individual worker, their entire day ends up organized around the logic of serving as the disposable on-call workforce. All time is potential work time. As one worker put it, there can be no Sundays, life time that is fully dispensable and available. Two, institutional relations of social cooperation are subsumed into capital accumulation circuits, building off and entrenching social power hierarchies undergirding labor markets. In this re-casting of the whole of sociality as a social factory, structural oppression is recast as isolated, individualized experiences of humiliation to be navigated at the personal level by the worker. For instance, caste discrimination—such as instances where food delivery workers are asked to leave parcels at the door without crossing the threshold—is recast as a case of a ‘difficult customer’ that the worker must learn to negotiate, rather than workplace discrimination for which platforms must take responsibility. And finally, as Anuradha said, we saw how there is a new paradigm of housewifization–where there is a more fluid, unstable configuration of gendered labor divisions within the family unit, which we examine through the new heuristic of the “quintessential gig household”.

Q2. How can we shape feminist futures of work in the age of ubiquitous Uberization and Amazonification? What reflections do you have from the research?

Anuradha: Any feminist future of work has to pay attention to the labor of social care: who performs it? Under what conditions? How can its costs be socialized? Secondly, we need to think about how value generation in the platform epoch can be re-oriented towards greater democratization–what would this take? The platform cooperative model offers one alternate pathway in this direction–are there others? These are clear future focus areas for feminist researchers working in the area of the future of work.

Nandini: To begin with, platform work must be re-embedded in a social contract which guarantees decent work. Fixing intersectional discrimination in platform work environments and guaranteeing an equitable present of work is the first step to working towards a feminist future of work. In this process, public platform infrastructures supported by public investment and democratic governance arrangements can make a big difference. The essential function of labor market mediation need not be a private monopoly as it currently is, and we discuss this briefly in our concluding reflections in the paper. As feminist traditions of social and solidarity economics demonstrate, infrastructural public goods can play a critical role in the democratization of value.

Q3. What are your thoughts on how to effectively incorporate a gender lens into policy responses to the gig economy? What tends to go missing?

Anuradha: I think a ‘whole of ecosystem’ approach is crucial to policy response in this space. This includes a range of interventions from public financing for alternate platform models, to worker rights and institutional guarantees as well as platform regulation. Additionally, policy needs to take an intersectional lens, which is often missing. For example, more recent research points to the intersections of gig work and environmental risks, and the need to integrate climate considerations into discussions of gig economy and labor precarity. Ultimately, incorporating a gender lens into policy about recognizing the intersections of various forms of precarities and pushing for more collaborative and collective approaches to address the systemic issues of platform capitalism.

Nandini: It is critical for policymakers to shift beyond “empowering flexiwork” narratives to unpack gendered precarity in their specific contexts, and design a holistic policy response to building gender-inclusive digital economies that further women’s human rights. Research points to the urgent need for “coherent policies on skills and education for women and girls, decent work, care infrastructure, preventing and responding to GBV, data rights, migrant rights, and corporate accountability.”

About the Author(s)

Anuradha Ganapathy

Anuradha Ganapathy is a mid career professional who recently transitioned from the corporate to the development sector. She has a Masters from SOAS University of London in Anthropology of Development and Sustainability. She also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from India, a Postgraduate Certification in Gender, Sexuality and Society from Birkbeck, University of London, and a Postgraduate Certification in Technology Policy. Her work interests lie in the areas of the digital gender divide, technology adoption at the margins, digital and economic justice and platforms for development.

Nandini Chami

Nandini is the deputy director at IT for Change. Her work largely focuses on research and policy advocacy in the domains of digital rights and development, and the political economy of women’s rights in the information society. She is part of the organisation’s advocacy efforts around the 2030 development agenda on issues of ‘data for development’ and digital technologies and gender justice.