A blunt tool for women* in platform work? A feminist perspective on the Platform Work Directive

Abstract

The Platform Work Directive is a victory for workers who mobilised for stronger rights and protection in the platform economy. Workers provided insights about this novel way of work, which fuelled lively academic and policy debates; challenged platforms practices in courts; demanded better working conditions by organising protests and strikes; and urged policymakers to design new laws. That said, in these debates about regulation of platform work, only some workers had their voices heard; others were rarely listened to. This article focuses on typically female experiences in platform work that have been marginalised in research and policy debates; in particular, it looks at digital care platforms. These present a particularly broad diversity of operational models deployed to intermediate between clients and workers. As a result, the paper shows that employment may not, after all, be the ultimate solution to platform workers’ problems, at least not for workers who are unable to access the status, for legal or other reasons. In sum, it may be useful, beyond developing indicators of an employment relationship and reducing false self-employment, to discuss how labour rights, independently of status, would have to be designed so as to be more easily enforceable in the social and institutional contexts in which digital labour platforms work. The article concludes that the neglect of gendered perspectives in the development of the Platform Work Directive may render it a blunt instrument for addressing the challenges associated with feminised, informal, and invisible forms of platform work. Nevertheless, despite — or perhaps because of — its limitations, the Directive has the potential to stimulate critical debates on the regulatory reforms needed to close protection gaps for women* and other marginalised workers.