IT for Change, with support from Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, is undertaking a project ‘Pathways to Gender Equality in the Platform Economy: Evolving a Policy Agenda for Beijing+30’, commencing in January 2025.
Belying initial optimism, platformization has not opened up empowering flexi-work opportunities that address traditional constraints to women’s effective participation in the economy. Addressing the unique challenges that women platform workers face, the project seeks to explore the question of what it would take to reclaim the potential of platformization for an economy-wide re-organization of employment and social institutions that guarantee a feminist future of work.
Through a series of four regional consultations in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe (held in English), and Latin America (held in Spanish), we seek to bring together 30–40 feminist scholar-practitioners, trade union representatives, and academics. The deliberations will inform the development of a synthesis report that the organizers will leverage for an advocacy effort on the occasion of the Beijing+30 review at the UN Commission on Status of Women 2025.
In specific, the consultations will examine the following questions through a contextual sharing of reflections/insights from each of the participants:
1. What are the unique challenges that women workers face in platform work environments?
2. What techno-design reforms do we need in platform work environments to address gender discrimination and exclusion and how can we achieve them in cross-border platform transnational corporations’ operations?
3. How can policymakers think out of the box when designing for feminist futures of work in the platform economy, particularly:
a. Innovative gender-inclusive social protection schemes
b. Promotion of platform cooperatives led by women workers and their organizations. Structural inequalities impeding gender-just futures of work