Women, across the world, have been striving hard to set aside their traditional roles and seek greater participation in areas hitherto dominated by their male counterparts. However, the story of Women participation in the workforce has been one of slow evolution. One reason for this slow growth has been the fact that women continue to face biases in hiring and promotion due to challenges uniquely faced by women. Women across skill categories face several challenges and disruptions on account of events like marriage or maternity. Further, unlike what their male counterparts have to face, women continuously need to do a balancing jugglery between work and household responsibilities. According to Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” 43 percent of highly qualified women with children are leaving careers or off-ramping for a period of time. Statutory provisions that make paid maternity leaves a mandatory provision is further discouraging companies from hiring women.
However, the recent surge in Gig economy has the serious potential of becoming a turning point by leveling the field for both the sexes. The possibility of getting the white collar knowledge work done remotely can offer women the essential but elusive time, flexibility, and balance between personal and professional life. The rise of gig economy has opened up a new world of opportunity for women around the world due to several factors.
Transactional Relationships: Gig economy is driven by outcome based transactional relationships. The focus on the outcome takes away many other factors from the equation which would otherwise come into play when hiring a full time employee. In this case, companies are focused on the deliverables and are least bothered about the long-term direct and indirect cost of engaging a particular person. With the weight of “other considerations” off their shoulders, women can showcase themselves as subject matter experts who can deliver the goods.
Gig offers Flexibility: The white collar Gig economy is dominated by remote work arrangements with interactions driven mostly through online digital media. The Gig economy dynamics is setting free both the employer and the worker from a 9 to 5 face-time schedule and moving the focus away towards task orientation. This move towards task orientation is opening up new avenues for women who were otherwise losing out on such opportunities as they couldn’t accommodate a 9-5 schedule in their constrained calendar loaded with other household responsibilities. The gig economy is providing professional women an opportunity to stay in the game while they start families, launch new businesses or care for a sick child, spouse or parent.
Pay Parity: The traditional workplace economy has tended to have a gender bias which was also reflected in pay disparity for the same skills or experience level. The pay disparity has been found to be much lower in the remote-work knowledge driven gig economy. According to the 2018 APAC workforce insights while there is a 12 per cent gap between men and women in traditional full-time jobs, the gap is only 5 per cent in the gig economy. In fact a research carried out by a popular gig platform Fiverr shows that there is only a .4% difference between what female and male freelancers earn per project. These statistics are pointers to the fact that the gig economy is putting much higher value on the outcome and is paying much less premium on which gender is delivering that outcome.
Global and delocalized: The white collar gig economy is riding on the back of technological advancements which have made it feasible to seamlessly hire, track work, and coordinate with remote workers. This has taken geographic location out of the equation when engaging an expert is concerned. The gig economy with its delocalized character is creating a truly global market for specialized skills. This is beneficial to women who often find themselves hopping from one location to another to accommodate the needs of others in the family.
Continuous Learning: The learning and the skilling world has undergone massive transformations with high quality learning resources available to every learner who is keen to upgrade skills or acquire a new skill. The traditional classroom based learning systems with restricted access through limited number of seats created boundaries around learning. The digital learning economy is unshackling the learning and making it accessible to all. The digital learning economy has made it possible for women to easily up-skill or acquire new skills and participate in the dynamic gig economy.
Becoming their own boss: With “Work-life balance” dictating most of the professional decision making for women, turning into their own bosses is a much more attractive proposition for them than to work within a regimented organisational structure with little flexibility. The recent spurt in Gig platforms (Upwork, Freelancer, gigHub etc) which make it a lot easier for freelancers to connect with companies and find work is fueling this urge among women to go independent. This new breed of these Mompreneurs will be playing a critical role in the fast maturing gig economy of tomorrow.
Rapid technological changes & evolving preferences had already set in pace a decisive paradigm shift towards a work economy that will be dominated by gig relationships. The recent Covid-19 pandemic, which is still un-folding in many countries, has further speeded up this process. The gig economy defined by little entry barriers, negligible gender bias and higher pay-parity is heralding a new world of opportunities for women. The stage is set for women to come and conquer the gig economy by carving a commanding position for themselves in the emerging global professional workforce.