When you’re out in any city in India, you can see delivery drivers darting around on their bikes, around the clock – on highways and along smaller gullies, zigzagging through the oppressive traffic and nimbly evading the blind spots of the loud, rickety buses. Drivers’ loyalties (to one of around three to four major platforms) are easily discernible from the colour of their respective uniforms and delivery gear. Asking drivers to wear these uniforms is a somewhat sneaky manoeuvre by platforms, because they don’t technically employ the drivers. In fact, in other countries this practice has gotten platforms in trouble because platform workers have used it to argue that platforms control how they work as they would employees while not classifying them as such. All in all, however, no one frets much about having to wear a uniform, as this concern pales next to the other facts of this work – the daily risks, the precarious income, the uncertainty of having work the next day, or the next week.

Another fact of delivery work concerns who does it – the vast majority of delivery workers in India are men.[1] The gendered nature of this type of work is so characteristic of it that most people only notice this fact when an anomaly presents itself – that is, on those rare occasions when a woman turns up at your door with your order, or when you glimpse a long plait or two snaking down from under the helmet of the motorcyclist travelling beside you. Or when you decide, as a woman, to work for one of these companies.

Working for a delivery platform is an odd choice for a woman in India, but when Srikala signed up to work for the platform, she didn’t have other choices, and she tried not to dwell on that too much. She needed the money, after all. The platform uniform did make her uncomfortable though – wearing it felt like too much of a commitment to what she hoped was a temporary phase in her career, and, moreover, it was a sure-fire way to tip her family off about her new work. They didn’t know she had lost her previous job, and she didn’t think they would like her new work very much. In the beginning, she would sneak out of her house in the morning in her regular clothes and change into her uniform in the public washroom of a nearby mall, repeating the routine in reverse before returning home in the evening. But this soon got tiresome, and anyway, she realised no one from the platform really checked on her anyway, so she stopped wearing the uniform altogether.

For a few weeks, Srikala slowly adjusted to the rhythms of delivery work, getting to know streets that she’d never been in despite having lived in this city her whole life, and becoming proficient at switching between the platform app and Google Maps (the platform app’s navigation system was a bit clunky in live mode). She was beginning to settle into, and perhaps even like, this work. True, she did have to fend off a constant stream of comments and unsolicited advice from her male colleagues at delivery hubs. When she went there to wait between orders, they often crowded about her, curiously asking about and comparing her incentives and earnings to theirs and advising her that she wasn’t earning nearly enough. This annoyed her, but she learned to avoid the crowded waiting areas and just get on with her work.

One night, when she was eating dinner with her family at a restaurant, Srikala saw other drivers at her platform at work, whizzing past the restaurant. She was puzzled – every day, she was automatically logged out of the app at 6 pm in the evening, so how were they working when she couldn’t even access the app after 6? The next day, she went to the crowded waiting area that she usually avoided to find out. The men there were confused and didn’t know what she meant; they had never been logged out of the app unless they were blocked for not delivering orders in time. Wondering if there was something wrong with her account, Srikala called the platform’s rider support helpline. When she finally got through, she was told that it was standard protocol for women delivery drivers to be automatically logged out at 6 pm for their own safety. This infuriated her – it wasn’t fair that she was logged out of the app before the peak dinner rush when most orders came in! Now it made sense that her incentives and earnings were lower than her male colleagues’. She was always hearing how platforms provide flexible work arrangements – she couldn’t help but think, ‘flexible for whom?’[2]

Frustrated, she decided to look into other platform work. She remembered that one of her friends worked at a domestic work platform. She wondered if she would have an easier time on this platform as domestic work was considered more ‘women’s work’. She called her friend to ask about it. After a long chat with her where they compared their two platforms, she hung up, feeling unsure. Her friend explained that – while her earnings were decent – she found it a bit odd that her husband got notified of her location automatically whenever she accepted a new job.[3] Her platform said they did this because women’s families felt more comfortable about letting them go to work if they knew where they were at any given time. Srikala hadn’t even worked up the courage to tell her family that she had lost her previous job; she wasn’t sure how she could make this work…

***

The design and management of platforms structure and govern the lived experiences of platform work in different ways. In some cases, platform workers are vulnerable to sudden termination (deactivation), and loss of income, often without due process. Workers may be subject to unfair penalties or disciplinary decisions and may lack the ability to contact the platform to challenge or appeal such decisions. The Fairwork project argues that if the management of platform work is to be fair, platforms need to be transparent about how algorithms are used to determine access to work and remuneration, and to create structures and processes that allow for workers to meaningfully appeal disciplinary actions.

Furthermore, platforms may actively discriminate against particular groups of workers; two examples of platforms’ differential treatment of women are highlighted in the case of Srikala and her friend. Even where platforms do not actively discriminate against particular groups, they may inadvertently exacerbate already existing inequalities through their design and management. In light of this, the Fairwork project advocates that platforms put in place policies to ensure that workers are not disadvantaged through management processes, and to minimise risks of users discriminating against workers. If a traditionally disadvantaged group is significantly underrepresented on their platform, we also advocate that the platform takes steps to identify and remove barriers to inclusion.