The gender pay platform gap during the COVID‐19 pandemic and the role of platform gender segregation in Australia

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• Author: Brendan Churchill
• Date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12281

Received: 19 May 2022

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Accepted: 16 October 2023

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12281

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The gender pay platform gap during the

COVID‐19 pandemic and the role of platform

gender segregation in Australia

Brendan Churchill

Discipline of Sociology, School of Social

and Political Sciences, The University of

Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Correspondence

Brendan Churchill, Discipline of

Sociology, School of Social and Political

Sciences, The University of Melbourne,

Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.

Email: Brendan.Churchill@unimelb.

edu.au

Funding information

Australian Research Council,

Grant/Award Number: DE220100027

Abstract

Progress towards pay equity between men and women

in the Australian economy stalled during the

COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting once again the

gendered impact of the pandemic. However, little is

known about the impact of the pandemic on the

gender pay gap in the platform economy. Drawing on

data from an Australian survey of platform workers

(n= 947) during the early months of the pandemic

(2020), this research investigates how the pandemic

impacted the gender pay gap across different platform

types—care, delivery and driving, microwork, and

marketplace—and the platform economy overall. The

findings show that the gendered segregated nature

of platform work compounded by the uneven impact of

the COVID‐19 pandemic on particular types of

platform work increased the pay gap between men

and women. This research also sought to examine the

mechanisms behind the gender pay gap, finding that

human capital differences and platform gender segre-

gation largely explain the gender pay gap on platforms

in Australia. There was an association between

parenthood and earnings, but this is moderated by

New Technol Work Employ. 2024;39:196–217.196

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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ntwe

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. New Technology, Work and Employment published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

human capital and platform type, suggesting that

differences in earnings amongst parents are explained

by these factors. The research finds that the gender gap

across the platform economy increased by five percentage

points, indicating that the gendered impact of the

COVID‐19 pandemic also affected the platform economy.

KEYWORDS

COVID‐19, gender inequality, gender pay gap, gender

segregation, gig economy, platform economy

INTRODUCTION

The gender

1

pay gap in Australia as of May 2023 is 13%,

2

which equates to women earning

$252.30 less each week than men on average. This marks the narrowest gender pay gap

recorded, occurring after the initial phase of the COVID‐19 pandemic (2020–2021). During this

period, the gender pay gap briefly widened, fluctuating between 13.4% and 14.2%, interrupting

a period of sustained progress throughout the latter part of the previous decade (Workplace

Gender Equality Agency [WGEA], 2023). However, these figures do not include the platform

economy as the gender pay gap is based on employee earnings data. There is currently no

national data on the gender pay gap, which includes digitally‐mediated workers who secure

work from platforms like Airtasker or Uber in Australia because this type of work is not

captured in the national statistics. However, there is a small albeit growing body of evidence in

other Western countries that suggests the gender pay gap that exists in the traditional labour

market extends to platforms like Uber (Cook et al., 2018) and microtask platforms like Amazon

MTurk (Adams, 2020). This research focuses on the extent of the gap in the Australian platform

economy and how the COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted it.

The early phase of the pandemic (2020–2021), which included multiple lockdowns and

shelter‐in‐place orders that shut down cities, was very uneven in its impact, affecting some

sectors of the economy more than others and some groups of people more than others. In the

Australian labour market, women were particularly impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic

because they were over‐represented in sectors like retail and hospitality which were among the

most affected by lockdowns (ABS, 2021). They also faced increased work at home with greater

time spent caring for children and family members as well as increased household labour

(Craig & Churchill, 2021a,2021b,2021c). There is no Australian research on the impact of the

pandemic on the platform economy yet, but the growing international evidence suggests a

1

The term ‘gender pay gap’is used here in line with current research on the topic, but it should be acknowledged that

research on the gender pay gap usually refers to the sex pay gap because the data uses binary measures of gender. This

research included a more inclusive measurement of gender in the survey, but all respondents identified as male or

female.

2

This figure is based on full‐time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The figure is derived from calculating the difference between average men's weekly ordinary time earnings and

women's weekly ordinary time earnings divided by men's weekly ordinary time earnings (ABS, 2023).

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