What do women earn in Australia’s gig economy? Up to a third less than men

If you’re a woman working in Australia’s gig economy, you could be earning up to 37% less than your male counterparts.

That’s one of the findings of a new report by the state of Victoria, which is in the southeast of the country. Its government commissioned the Queensland University of Technology to review Australian and global research into the gig economy.

The gig economy refers to short-term contracts and freelance work, rather than permanent jobs. The Australian report – Gendered Dimensions of Digital Platform Work – concludes that this kind of working can “exacerbate existing gender inequalities in work” and even “create new modes of gender inequality”.

Women earn between 10% and 37% less than men for work in the gig economy, the report notes. They also face “variable incomes and fluctuating rates of pay” – especially in domestic care roles.

Men earn on average AUD2.67 ($2.01) more per hour for gig work than women. Annual salaries for women in the gig economy are also more likely to be under $40,000, while men are more likely to earn above $100,000.

Global research mentioned in the report suggests that gig working reinforces gender stereotypes. For example, there are fewer women in sectors such as transport and food delivery, and more men in areas such as software development and technology.

Other research echoes these findings. A report on the gig economy in the European Union published in the European Labour Law Journal notes that translation services and “on-location services” (for example, working in people’s homes) are the types of gig work most dominated by women. For men, it’s software development and transport.

The report describes gig working as “a huge opportunity for enhancing women’s economic equality” – because women are able to fit in gig economy work around home and care work.

But the author also warns that “machine-learning algorithms are resulting in discrimination” – by favouring men for certain roles.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 finds that women face “severe under-representation” in the job roles of the future. This includes cloud computing, where women make up just 14% of the workforce, and engineering, where women account for a fifth of the workforce. In data and artificial intelligence, 32% of the workforce is women.

This disparity is a key part of wage inequality, as these kinds of roles typically command higher-than-average salaries. Meanwhile, the type of jobs common among low- to middle-income women are “likely to be disproportionately represented among jobs destroyed by automation”, the Forum warns.

The headline finding in the Global Gender Gap Report 2021, which covers 156 countries, is that women globally are 135.6 years away from gender parity with men. In economic participation and opportunity – which includes gender pay – the gap is even larger, at 267.6 years.