Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn the last few years, the proliferation of digital labour platforms has led to the transformation of business models and labour relations in an increasing number of economic activities, including highly feminized and informal traditional sectors, such as care and domestic work. Drawing on an analysis of 37 digital care platforms in Spain, this research compares the distinctive features and structural power dynamics they engender, and it constructs a taxonomy of business models of these care platforms. By analysing the main features of their operational models, we are capable of distinguishing three main types of platforms: marketplace, on‐demand, and digital placement agencies. First, the paper argues that the distinctive features of each digital platform business model have differentiated impacts on working conditions in terms of access to tasks, remuneration, flexibility and means of control. This differentiation allows us to understand what is transformative and what is continuous in platforms' precarization or formalisation of care work and working conditions of carers, mainly women and migrants. Each business model has its differentiated outcomes in terms of labour control and reorganization of women's and migrants' reproductive work. Second, more broadly, while digital care platforms may have contributed to facilitating workers' access to jobs, reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work and to increased market pressures. Therefore, this study contributes to existing research addressing the degree of formalization of labour relations in digital platform work through a nuanced analysis of their business models.

Este artículo reflexiona sobre las nuevas dinámicas productivas y espacios de trabajo en las economías postindustriales asociadas a la expansión de la digitalización y la economía de plataforma sobre diferentes dimensiones de la calidad del trabajo a través de un análisis interseccional, que no sólo incluye el género, sino también la edad o la generación, como ejes cruciales de análisis. Los resultados muestran un empeoramiento de la calidad del trabajo con el trabajo desde casa o móvil en casi todos los índices de calidad, destacando los efectos negativos sobre el entorno y el tiempo. La interacción entre el autoempleo y el teletrabajo penaliza en particular las perspectivas profesionales y el entorno social. Las mujeres y los jóvenes continúan en trabajos con peores condiciones laborales, aunque sus efectos son inferiores a los relacionados con los factores asociados a la digitalización.

This article investigates the impact of the recent economic crisis and associated austerity agenda on working low educated women in Portugal and Spain. It draws firstly on a comparative analysis of Eurostat Labour Force Survey data, recent reform to the labour market and care policy; secondly, on qualitative research exploring changes in low educated women's employment, family arrangements and values. The findings reveal that in both countries low educated women maintained their labour market attachment but faced increased risks of labour market exclusion, precarity and low pay. However, the weight of women's household income contributions increased in the context of male unemployment and earnings insecurity, which reinforced women's work attachment. Moreover, employment appeared critical to women's identity and associated with egalitarian values. Despite greater protection of equality policies and welfare support for dual‐earner families in Portugal, the evidence suggests a negative impact of austerity on work–family reconciliation opportunities for low educated women in both countries.

Despite women being increasingly engaged in labor-platform activities, little of the research conducted on this topic to date has included a feminist perspective. However, the platform economy has direct impacts on the social organization of social reproduction and is changing the main dimensions of the world of work with crucial gendered effects. This study deploys a feminist political economics approach to assess the impacts of digital labor platforms on the reconfiguration and regeneration of intersectional inequalities. The findings of this analysis of digital platforms in the care sector in Spain reveal how they profit from regulatory contexts that perpetuate existing gender, race, and migrant status inequalities, as well as labor market vulnerability, with migrant women segregated into lower-paid and more insecure jobs. JEL Classification: J3, J5, J7, O3

The 20th century has witnessed an increase in the female participation force in Western countries, especially since 1940s. Explanations behind the more intensive use of female labour are of different nature: globalization forces, the relative female/male wage linked to an increase in education and productivity, the tertiarization of the economy, and other institutional and cultural factors that allow women to control fertility, invest in assets other than the family ones and alter female bargaining power. Since these phenomena are complex and might respond to specific reasons and timing in different countries, it is important to advance on country case studies in a comparative basis. While in other Western countries the increase in female labor participation started to be significant in the 1960s and 1970s, Spanish female activity rates started to rise dramatically in the 1980s, concurrently with the deep integration of Spain in international markets, especially through the entry in the European Union in 1986. In this paper, we will analyze the reasons behind the decalage in female labor force participation in Spain after WWII in comparison with other Western countries, and the subsequent catching up from the 1980s in order to determine the level of influence of Spanish integration in international markets, as well as other economic, institutional and cultural factors. ; REPEC_wphaei ; Preprint

La Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) nació con vocación igualitaria, de ahí que los estudios de género en postgrado surgieran pronto en la UPO ante la conciencia de que, aunque las mujeres representan la mitad de la población, observamos la enorme injusticia que padecen en cuanto que su pensamiento y acciones han sido ignoradas en la construcción de la sociedad en la que viven. Además, si consideramos que las mujeres contribuyen de forma considerable a la financiación del desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología, no sólo les corresponde un lugar como sujeto, sino también como objeto receptor de sus resultados.