Abstract
The seminar will explore the diverse experiences of women navigating the growing digital platform economy. It critically examines the narratives of empowerment and inclusion often promoted by state actors and industries, contrasting these with the lived realities of precarity, informality, and discrimination shaped by intersecting inequalities of gender, class, race, and geography. Taking a global perspective, the discussion will consider how digital platforms influence opportunities and risks for women workers, addressing themes such as strategies to navigate unsafe and unequal gig work environments, the impact of weak regulatory frameworks, and the urgency of developing gender-just approaches to platform governance and AI development. This seminar aims to foster dialogue on advancing rights and protections for women in gig work while focusing their knowledge and agency on shaping a more equitable future.
Biographies
Dr Kaveri Medappa is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography in the Department for Continuing Education, and a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. She received her PhD in International Development from the University of Sussex (2018-2022) for her ethnographic study of app-based food delivery workers and cab drivers in Bangalore, India.
Natalia Rodriguez Malagon is a feminist human rights and gender justice specialist at ActionAid UK, focusing on Women’s Economic Justice through feminist policy, research, and advocacy for economic alternatives centred on care and wellbeing. With over nine years of experience, mainly in Colombia, she has worked across governmental and non-governmental organisations at local, national, and international levels, specialising in gender-responsive planning, budgeting, and corporate accountability.
Dr Karen Gregory is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. A digital sociologist and ethnographer, she co-leads the Digital Social Science Research Cluster at the University’s Center for Data, Culture, and Society. She is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy and on the Editorial Board at Platforms and Society.
