Women in the platform economy

Abstract

We provide descriptive evidence on women’s experiences in platform-based driving and delivery work using survey and administrative data from India and Indonesia. Partnering with major two-wheeler platforms, we study representative samples of drivers, oversampling women to examine gender differences (India: 404 women, 2,153 men; Indonesia: 892 women, 2,114 men). Female participation is extremely low — 0.8% in India and 1.5% in Indonesia — consistent with barriers related to safety concerns, cultural norms, and limited access to required assets. Among women who do enter, platform work is used differently than by men: women work fewer hours, are more likely to log in during free time, and place greater value on flexibility and supplemental earnings. Women earn less per hour than men — by 6-8% in India and 8-22% in Indonesia — differences that align with gendered choices over working times, locations, and service types, likely shaped by safety and domestic constraints. Women also face distinct challenges: higher reported harassment in both countries and, in Indonesia, widespread customer discrimination and higher accident rates. At the same time, a disproportionate share of women were unemployed before joining the platform, and women are more likely than men to report higher current earnings relative to prior work. Together, the evidence highlights how flexibility coexists with persistent gender-specific risks, constraints, and unequal returns in location-based platform work in low- and middle-income country contexts.

Introduction

Digital platforms match service providers with consumers through automated systems, offering flexible work arrangements and more predictable earnings than many informal jobs (Schwellnus et al., 2019). They have reshaped labor markets by lowering entry barriers and enabling workers to adjust hours in response to personal and economic constraints. In low- and middle-income countries – where roughly 70 percent of workers are self-employed or in the informal sector (The World Bank, 2019) – these features may expand earning opportunities for groups with limited access to formal jobs. This flexibility may be particularly relevant for women, for whom domestic and childcare responsibilities often constrain labor supply.

Women’s labor force participation in low- and middle-income countries is shaped by cultural norms, access to education and physical capital, and unpaid domestic responsibilities (Jayachandran, 2020). Available employment opportunities are often in the informal sector, where earnings and job stability tend to be limited (Singh and Gupta, 2011). Platform-based gig work may offer a more attractive alternative to women by providing flexible work arrangements that can accommodate household responsibilities. Understanding the extent to which such platforms affect women’s economic outcomes and work experiences is therefore of great academic and policy interest. Much of the work in this nascent space has been in high-income country (HIC) contexts; we aim to fill the evidence gap for low- and middle-income countries.

This paper provides descriptive evidence on women’s experiences in platform-based gig work in India and Indonesia. We partnered with established driving and delivery platforms in both countries and focus on two-wheeler drivers, who are more likely than four-wheeler drivers to come from lower-resourced backgrounds. Using administrative data from partner platforms, we drew representative samples of drivers, oversampling women to study gender heterogeneity. Drivers were surveyed by phone between February and July 2024, with reach rates of 18% in India and 48% in Indonesia. Access to population-level administrative data allows us to re-weight survey responses using poststratification to improve representativeness on observable characteristics, though selection on unobservables may remain. The final sample includes 404 women and 2,153 men in India, and 892 women and 2,114 men in Indonesia. In India, we complement survey data with several months of administrative records on hours and compensation, enabling more detailed analysis of gender differences in labor supply and earnings; in Indonesia, the analysis relies primarily on survey data.

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The Digital Economy Research Impact Initiative (DERII) is a five-year initiative (funded by the Gates Foundation) to study the digital economy and its welfare implications on gig workers using platforms that provide location-based services in three countries – India, Kenya, and Indonesia. The full research report from the three countries is available here.