Reconfiguring Identity Towards Male-worker Norms: Gender Exclusion of Female Delivery Riders in China’s Gig Economy

• In Event: 41021 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 6: Labor Movements, Global Economics, and the Gig Economy

Abstract

This study examines gender exclusion and identity in the gig economy, focusing on female food delivery riders in China. While previous studies have examined the gig economy through the lens of flexibility, precarity, and algorithmic control, there has been limited exploration of gender dynamics within this field. This study addresses the gap by examining how female riders in China experience gender exclusion and how they navigate gender identity in their work.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews and field observations, we explore the experiences, perceptions, and strategies of female riders. First, findings reveal female riders face gender exclusion through restricted interpersonal interactions in physical and digital workspaces. It is attributed to a male-dominated misogyny culture, including degradation of legitimacy and sexual harassment. The restricted interpersonal interaction excludes female riders from informational circles to exchange critical information and collectively resist algorithmic control.

Second, female riders signify their identities towards an “ideal rider” model that implicitly confirms male-centric standards. Our analysis reveals that female riders reconfigure their gender identity by normalizing male-centric standards, such as narrating oneself as “female dude” (nv han zi) for achievements. Female riders adapt to excessive endurance of time, emotional labor, and unrelieved heavy domestic work, believing these as women’s work ethics to exceed female marginalization. It reflects female riders’ coping agency; however, on the other hand, it confirms systematic exclusion by gender and benefits platforms’ exploitation of labor.

This research underscores the intersection of gender, class, and technology in the gig economy, challenging assumptions about worker solidarity in previous studies. It also contributes to the examination of the gendered costs of “flexibility” in platform work, re-examining how the emerging algorithmic labor regimes in the Global South reproduce inequality.

Keywords: gender, platform work, labor, gig economy, algorithm, China.

Authors

• Hanyang Zhou, Duke Kunshan University

• Mingjiang Gao

• Yixin Gu, Duke Kunshan University

• Yongkun Wu

• Fan Liang