The Gender Pay Gap in the Platform Economy: Comparing the Importance of Market and Organisational Dynamics on Two German Crowdworking Platforms

Abstract

The rise of the platform economy has brought about crowdwork as a new form of flexible work where individuals solve specific problems or provide specific services or products in exchange for payment via online platforms. Survey data for crowdworkers in Germany collected by the 'Digital Future' collaborative research unit are used to compare gender inequalities in hourly pay among crowdworkers sampled from a marketplace platform and a micro-task platform. The results reveal that fathers earn higher hourly pay than mothers and childless women and men, but only on the marketplace platform. These differences can partly be explained by fathers being better positioned in the overall labour market and fathers' investment patterns in crowdwork, with longer seniority on the platform and quick task performance, which results in higher hourly pay. Investments in crowdwork and overall labour market positioning are only of modest importance on the micro-task platform. This points to different organisational settings and inequality regimes on the two platforms under study.

Keywords

• platform labour
• platform economy
• crowdwork
• algorithmic control
• gender inequalities
• gender pay gap
• flexibility