A plataformização do trabalho não tem rosto de mulher: as experiências e percepções de condutoras

Abstract

Neoliberalism, financialization and datafication are the result of transformations observed over the last few decades, characterizing the perfect context for the emergence of a new business model: work platforms. They do not consider themselves as employers, but mediators between self-employed people and consumers, who connect with each other through them. However, the platforms define all the working conditions, culminating in the subordination of the workers. Platforms have spread across different sectors of the economy since they emerged, consolidating specific governance, and work relationships. This research focuses on analyzing four ridehailing platforms in Juiz de Fora/MG: Uber, 99App, Livre and Para Elas Mobilidade. It was sought to show that, just as the platforms vary depending on the sector in which they operate, the experiences and perceptions of workers also have specificities, on this case, gendered specificities. For this purpose, I did a netnographic investigation on a WhatsApp group chat in which there are only female conductors. In addition, semistructured interviews were carried out to discuss issues that could not be investigated in depth with data from the group. As a result, it was found that workers face problems already pointed out about platform work in other studies – low rates, long hours, subordination to platforms, among others –, but also issues in which the gender of the worker is decisive: moral and sexual harassment, extension of working hours due to reproductive and care work, and the subjective capture by the platforms, who appropriate terms associated with social and political movements of women and other social minorities to attract more workers. It is identified, therefore, that the precariousness of work intensified by platformization also reproduces an unequal sexual division of the labor.