Search

Paid work and gender equality are key elements of international development discourse on women's economic empowerment. New digital technologies are considered to generate paid work opportunities for the marginalised groups in Africa, particularly women. The rise of the platform economy (work digitally mediated via platforms), for example, is framed as a panacea to poverty and informality among women. Yet the evidence remains anecdotal so far. Drawing on the author's empirical research conducted between 2015 and 2021 on two kinds of digital labour (remote and place-based work) in Africa, the paper examines the job-quality outcomes among women gig workers in five African countries. The paper highlights new gender-based inequalities on platforms and the ways in which women cope with such outcomes. In particular, it outlines economic insecurities, discrimination at work, high work intensity and adverse physical and psychological impacts among women workers on platforms. It advances the cause for women's labour rights and offers policy recommendations for a gender-equitable platform economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent gender gaps characterise labour markets in many African countries. Utilising Eswatini's first three labour market surveys (conducted in 2007, 2010, and 2013), this paper provides first systematic evidence on the country's gender gaps in employment and earnings. We find that women have notably lower employment rates and earnings than men, even though the global financial crisis had a less negative impact on women than it had on men. Both unadjusted and unexplained gender earnings gaps are higher in self-employment than in wage employment. Tertiary education and urban location account for a large part of the gender earnings gap and mitigate high female propensity to self-employment. Our findings suggest that policies supporting female higher education and rural-urban mobility could reduce persistent inequalities in Eswatini's labour market outcomes as well as in other middle-income countries in southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]