Women and the Rise of Gig Economy in Russia

Marina Zaloznaya

doi:10.17077/pp.006736

Historically, women have not been at the forefront of economic innovation – especially in the parts of the world where most people have little wealth and strong traditional gender norms. This is assumed to also be the case in the emergent gig economy, " in which digital platforms bring together workers and the purchasers of their services " (Hunt et al. 2019). The few relevant studies provide confirmation. Women face significant obstacles in access to the employment opportunities in platform-based economies (Kasliwal 2020), men are more likely to report that gig work is lucrative (Churchill and Craig 2019), and gender gap in earnings persists (Cook et al. 2021), and, despite the flexibility that gig work is supposed to provide, women employed in this format continue to report difficulties balancing job responsibilities with unpaid care and household work (Hunt et al. 2019). The results of our study described in this report, however, suggest, despite real difficulties associated with direct employment of women in the gig economy, and contrary to the myth of men being the driving force behind economic innovation, Russian women are largely responsible for the country's households' integration into the emergent digital platform-based marketplace. Methodology To our knowledge, this study is the first empirical exploration of gender patterns in Russia's gig economy. It was carried out as a part of the larger collaboration between the University of Iowa researchers and Russian researchers, entitled " Women and Informal Exchange Networks in Russia, " in 2021. As a part of this project, we surveyed 400 Russian women from four European Federal Districts-Central (172 women), NorthWestern (62 women), Southern (54 women) and Volga (111 women). Twenty-five cities and towns with population of over a hundred thousand residents were included in the sample plan: from cities over 1,000,000 people (except Moscow and St. Petersburg) we selected 20 women each; from Moscow-50; from St. Petersburg-30; from cities with population between 500,000 to 999,999 people – 15; from cities with population over 100,000 to 499,999 people – 10 in each. Our sample covered three age groups – 25 to 35, 36 to 45, and 46 to 55 years old. The data were collected through a telephone-based survey containing several types of questions – multiple-choice, scale-based, and open-ended questions. Unique to our survey was that, in addition to answering the questions directly, respondents also had a chance to explain their answers to the interviewer.

Women and the Rise of Gig Economy in Russia

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