Women’s Solidarity,Communicative Space,the Gig Economy’s Social Reproduction and Labour Process: The Case of Female Platform Drivers in China

Abstract

This article draws on a study conducted over a period of 17 months, including chatnography and semi-structured interviews with 30 female platform drivers working in China’s hail-riding industry, and makes three important contributions to the labour process and the social reproduction process scholarship. First, it fills a gap in the burgeoning literature on the gendered experience of gig work and of work–family flexibility in an on-demand economy. Women’s surplus production, as a means of subsistence for oneself and the family, is contradictory to childcare commitments in the labour process. Second, it theorises that the communicative space is a space for social reproduction in which labour-power is replenished outside the household. Labour productivity is not solely determined by algorithmic logic and platform control, but rather is organised by the social reproduction process. Third, it discusses how female platform workers negotiate technological insecurity and resist the platform’s control over and sexual exploitation in the communicative space. This sheds light on how the social reproduction process creates a potential for women’s solidarity. Women fight against sexual harassment and gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok. The social reproduction process organises labour resistance in a time of individual and collective crisis.

Keywords

on-demand economy gig economy social reproduction women’s solidarity gig labour process ride-hailing female platform drivers communication technologies China

Introduction

The study of the gig economy, within the field of sociology, has centred on the legal aspects of platform labour, especially the precarious nature of gig employment. There are increasing numbers of gig workers employed, both full-time and part-time, through crowdwork and on-demand work via apps (De Stefano, 2016; Hawksworth and Vaughan, 2014; Smith and Leberstein, 2015). However, gig workers’ labour rights and well-being are not protected under current regulatory frameworks in many countries (e.g. Aloisi, 2016; Cunningham-Parmeter, 2016; Finkin, 2016; Harris and Krueger, 2015; Scott and Brown, 2017). Policy-makers, therefore, review the impacts of the gig economy and make legal recommendations to protect gig workers’ labour rights and well-being (Heeks, 2017). Another sociological approach to the gig economy has focussed on capital–labour relations in the labour process, especially algorithmic control (Chan, 2021; Galière, 2020; Gandini, 2019; Li, 2021; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Sun et al., 2021; Vallas and Schor, 2020; Van Doorn, 2017; Veen et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019), and labour resistance and worker’s solidarity (Anwar and Graham, 2020; Chen, 2018; Heiland, 2021; Lei, 2021; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020). This article, in line with the labour process scholarship on the gig economy, investigates relations of production and the logic of capital accumulation in platform capitalism, and argues that labour studies should look at the social reality of production, seeing the social reproduction process as an integral part of the labour process. Drawing on a case study of Chinese female platform drivers, this article explores how the reproduction of labour-power organises women’s everyday experiences of negotiating, navigating and resisting gig work in the male-dominated, ride-hailing industry in China.

This study is based on research conducted over a period of 17 months, including chatnography and semi-structured interviews with 30 female platform drivers working in China’s ride-hailing industry. This article makes three important contributions to the labour process and social reproduction process scholarship. First, it fills a gap in the burgeoning literature on the gendered experience of gig work and of work–family flexibility in an on-demand economy. Women’s surplus production, as a means of subsistence for oneself and the family, is contradictory to childcare commitments in the labour process. Second, it theorises that the communicative space is a space for social reproduction in which labour-power is replenished outside the household. Labour productivity is not solely determined by algorithmic logic and platform control, but rather is organised by the social reproduction process. Third, it discusses how female platform workers negotiate technological insecurity and resist the platform’s control over and sexual exploitation in the communicative space. This sheds light on how the social reproduction process creates a potential for women’s solidarity. Women fight against sexual harassment and gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok. The social reproduction process organises labour resistance in a time of individual and collective crisis.

The second section summarises the gig economy, the labour process literature and the social reproduction scholarship, highlighting the importance of the social reproduction theory in theorising women’s solidarity and labour resistance, and proposing that the communicative space, outside of the household, is another arena to replenish labour-power. The third section introduces China’s ride-hailing giant, Didi Chuxing within the context of the ride-hailing industry in China. The fourth section explains the methodology. The fifth section presents women’s work–family flexibility in the on-demand economy as a struggle between the social reproduction process and surplus production. The sixth section demonstrates that workers’ behaviours and labour productivity are not only determined by algorithmic logic and platform control, but are also organised by individual subsistence and childcare commitments. The seventh section documents how and why female platform workers negotiate WeChat’s insecurity and resist the Didi’s platform control and sexual exploitation. The eighth section highlights how the social reproduction process organises labour resistance and collective agency in a time of individual and collective crisis, and documents how female platform drivers resist sexual harassment and gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok. The ninth section serves as the discussion and conclusion of this paper.

Theoretical Review

The Gig Economy and Labour Process Literature

Labour process theory studies management techniques and methods of control in a fixed workplace or organisation, such as a factory or office (Böhm and Land, 2012; Braverman, 1974; Burawoy, 1979; Smith, 2015; Thompson and Smith, 2009). It provides a significant framework to criticise capitalists’ appropriation of labour-power for capital accumulation and surplus profitability (Moore, 2018) and to examine labour exploitation, labour agency and labour resistance in capital–labour relations (Katz, 2004; Sallaz, 2002; Smith, 2001; Vallas, 2006). Gandini (2019) expands the labour process theory and highlights that the ‘point of production’ in the gig economy is a decentred, distinctive point of production. The enclosed technological infrastructure, an app, has extended the managerial control of labour by enforcing capital–labour relations upon a platform worker in the gig economy (Galière, 2020) and confining social relations of production to the app alone (Gandini, 2019; Veen et al., 2020).

Labour scholars have demonstrated a persistent attempt to denounce the intensification of the platform’s algorithmic despotism. Studies of the ride-hailing platform, Uber, reveal that the app controls platform drivers’ metrics by computing passengers’ ratings and feedback on the service (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Wu et al., 2019), and forces platform drivers to perform emotional labour (Aloisi, 2016) to secure a high rating and good feedback for a ride. Moreover, the app, programmed with techniques of gamification, also controls drivers’ behaviour, intensifying work engagement and enhancing labour productivity (Lehdonvirta, 2018; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). In China and Australia, ride-hailing platforms utilise ‘surge pricing’ and manipulate drivers’ productivity, forcing them to drive longer, or to work at a particular time or location (Veen et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2019). A recent study of Didi Chuxing, the ride-hailing giant in China, however, highlights that the app does not ‘fence off social relations’ (Gandini, 2019: 6). Instead, both labour intermediaries and communication technologies are other forms of managerial mechanisms in on-demand platforms (Li, 2021).

This article offers two reflections on labour scholars’ efforts to theorise the labour process in the gig economy. First, while much attention has been focussed on the discussion of labour control and algorithmic despotism in the labour process scholarship, this article argues that the social reproduction process, especially the reproduction of labour-power, organises female platform workers’ labour processes in the gig economy and leverages the potential of women’s solidarity and labour resistance. Second, responding to Li’s (2021) research on Didi Chuxing, which conceptualises communication technologies as a totalising tool to control labourers’ behaviour and to disfavour worker’s solidarity and labour resistance, this article focusses on female Didi drivers’ use of communication technologies. The paper theorises that the communicative space is a social reproductive space, where labour-power is replenished in the labour process. Communication technologies, used by female platform drivers to resist sexual exploitation and the platform’s control, and to fight against sexual harassment and gender-based violence, are an antagonistic means to facilitate collection action.

Social Reproduction Process, Women Solidarity and Labour Resistance

Lise Vogel (2013), a Marxist feminist, encapsulates the significance of reproduction of labour-power in her book, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Towards a Unitary Theory, and argues that ‘any production is, at one and the same time, reproduction’ (p. 143). In other words, capital–labour relations go beyond the waged workplace and exist outside the circuit of commodity production. The social reproduction scholarship has developed into two traditions. Many studies focus on the relationship between unpaid domestic labour and surplus value, emphasising that unpaid reproductive work, taking place outside of the productive sphere, is part of the process of value-generation in capitalism (Dalla Costa and James, 1972; Federici, 2004; Mezzadri, 2019; Mies, 1986). Other scholarship highlights that unpaid reproductive labour only has use-value (Benston, 1969; Smith, 1978; Vogel, 2013). To secure a means of subsistence for oneself and non-labouring family members, working-class women sell their labour-power and participate in surplus production, yet they are also responsible for the reproduction of labour-power, thereby nurturing the next generation of labourers and making them available for exploitation (Bhattacharya, 2017).

Vogel (2013) identifies three processes of reproduction of labour-power in a classed society: individual consumption, the process whereby a worker can restore their energy and return to work; care activities for non-labouring members, such as children, the elderly and sick family members of subordinate classes; and a generational replacement process, where the dead and disabled labour are replaced and renewed by the next generation of labour-force from the subordinate class. Marxist feminists, therefore, emphasise that women’s oppression is rooted in the daily and generational reproduction of labour-power in a capitalist society. However, women’s role in the maintenance and renewal of labour-power and in the participation of surplus labour is fundamentally contradictory (Bhattacharya, 2017; Vogel, 2013). Inspired by Marxist feminism, this article illustrates working-class women’s struggle between the social reproduction process and surplus-production and argues that the social reproduction process, especially individual subsistence and caring commitments for children, constitutes an important terrain of battle, creating a potential force for women’s solidarity and labour resistance in the labour process.

Reproduction of Labour-Power and Communicative Space

Social reproduction theory has pointed out that the circuit of social reproduction is not limited to a household, but instead, labour-power can be replenished through labour dormitories, churches, immigration or enslavement (Ferguson, 2020; Vogel, 2013). Social reproduction theory, furthermore, explains that a woman’s subordinate position is rooted in her differential location within the daily and generational reproduction of labour-power (Vogel, 2013), which does not necessarily happen within a household, or a family unit. Pun’s (2007) research on Chinese women migrant workers demonstrates that the daily reproduction of labour in dormitory labour systems increases output and profits for export-orientated industrial, global production. Hopkins’ (2017) study of female immigrant domestic workers highlights how faith-based spaces, such as churches, play an important role in the social reproduction process. In such spaces, female migrant domestic workers socially reproduce themselves, finding physical, emotional, and financial support to survive from exhausting and exploitative working conditions. Davis’s (1971) study on the black community and slavery in America argues that enslavement tears apart families and exploits black women’s productive and reproductive capacities. Black women, separated from their families, and living in harsh and inhumane conditions, perform ‘free’ domestic labour to keep the master’s house clean and organised, cook for the master and other slaves, and procreate and nurture the next generation of slave labour. This article joins the efforts of Marxist feminists and further advances social reproduction theory extending the analysis to communicative spaces, where a woman worker restores her energy, organises childcare arrangements and sustains ‘horizons of value that underpin social cooperation’ (Fraser, 2017: 23) in the gig economy.

Context: China’s Ride-Hailing Giant, Didi Chuxing

Didi Chuxing was selected as a case study to look at the gig economy’s labour process. Didi Chuxing is the largest ride-hailing platform in China. The company controls more than 90% market share in the ride-hailing industry since it acquired Kuaidi and Uber China (CNBC, 2019; Research Center on Sharing Economy (RCSE), 2018). The ride-hailing platform has 13 million active drivers (CNBC, 2021), with a high percentage of female drivers – about 2.37 million in total – working for the company in 2021 (Didi Research, 2021). Despite the growing number of studies on the ride-haling industry in China, empirical studies have exclusively focussed on male platform drivers (Li, 2021; Wu et al., 2019). This study is the first attempt to learn about female platform drivers’ everyday struggles and work–family conflicts in China, and to document labour resistance and women’s solidarity in the gig economy’s labour process.

Didi Chuxing recruits female drivers by promoting work–family flexibility and women’s economic empowerment (Didi Research, 2021). The platform ‘favours’ female drivers by allowing them to cancel a ride if they meet a drunk passenger, and by matching a female driver with female passengers during rides at night. Cars are a relatively expensive asset for working-class women, especially for single mothers. Single-mother drivers usually opt for renting a car, by giving a 10,000 RMB deposit to a car rental company and renting for a minimum period of 3 months. Other female drivers buy a car if they are able to pay the one-off down payment of at least 50,000 RMB. Didi drivers who rent a car from a car rental company have to pay for the gas; those who buy a car have to pay for their own maintenance, gas, and insurance. Communication technologies, such as WeChat, are used by both the Didi company and drivers.

Methodology

This research included chatnography and semi-structured interviews with 30 Chinese female Didi drivers, and was conducted over a period of 17 months, from November 2020 to March 2022. Chatnography is an ethnographic approach, which is used to understand how individual behaviours respond to, and simultaneously, are shaped by interactional and organisational processes (Lichterman, 2002). In contrast to traditional ethnography, which values offline observation in a physical field or place (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997), chatnography highlights that the field is no longer a particular site or physical location (Käihkö, 2020). Moreover, the method highlights the relational process as the essence of anthropological knowledge (Mosse, 2006), especially in a world where communication is blurred by online and offline interactions (Käihkö, 2020). A chatnographer, therefore, mainly utilises social media and instant messaging apps to conduct online participant observation and interviews (Käihkö, 2020).

Inspired by chatnography, this research particularly looks at communicative spaces, such as TikTok, where female platform drivers interact with one another, offering an opportunity to reach female platform workers in China, and making remote data collection possible (Fontes and O’Mahony, 2008) during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are 2.4 million female platform drivers registered with Didi Chuxing, but it is not easy to meet them in person. Female Didi drivers are either working part-time, so the chance of their recruitment through hailing a ride is very low, or working full-time, so they are too busy to talk to researchers during work hours, or are too tired to interact with strangers during their time-off.

At the start of the fieldwork, because of limited mobility caused by travel restrictions between Hong Kong and China’s border, I recruited female Didi drivers and conducted online participant observation and interviews through social media and instant messaging apps, including Kuaishou, TikTok and WeChat. I set up a profile in both Kuaishou and TikTok, and established friendships and trust with some female platform drivers. I participated in frequent casual conversations with some female platform drivers even though we never met in person. I was then invited by a female Didi driver to join a women-only WeChat group of more than 460 female Didi drivers in Shenzhen. This opportunity provided me with a chance to conduct participant observation and online interviews with female platform drivers, and offered me rich insights into female platform drivers’ working experiences, work–family struggles and women’s solidarity.

The semi-structured interviews allow for questions ranging from female Didi drivers’ working experiences and responses to platform control, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, and help to triangulate the validity of chatnography data (Patton, 1999). The interviews lasted about 10–15 minutes, and with consent, interviews were recorded through voice messaging or video calls. Female platform drivers were always either working on the platform or taking care of their families. I conducted interviews with the same female Didi drivers when they were waiting for clients, filling their cars with petrol, or resting before bedtime. The interview data were thematically analysed and carefully interpreted to represent and reconstruct images of social reality (Ragin and Amoroso, 2019). For example, the interview and participant observation data were categorised into several analytical frameworks, including work–family flexibility, communicative space, labour productivity, platform control, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, labour resistance, collective agency and women’s solidarity. All interviewees have been given a pseudonym in this article.

Thirty female platform drivers, aged between 18 and 58 years, were interviewed (see Table 1). The majority had worked for multiple ride-hailing platforms for periods ranging from less than 6 months to 6 years. Many female Didi drivers worked more than 10 hours per day. The geographical composition of interviewees’ working locations was diverse, including Chaozhou, Chengdu, Shandong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Yunnan and Yulin. Interviewees driving in Shanghai and Shenzhen were mostly internal migrants with a rural hukou, who had moved from rural areas to the cities and had lived in the city for 5–10 years; the others were all locals with an urban hukou. Most of the interviewees had children, and divorced mothers accounted for the majority. Most female Didi drivers had only primary level education, and some expressed difficulty in reading comments in the live-streaming chat room. Many interviewees had prior working experience in the manufacturing industry.

Table 1.

Demographic information.

Demographic categories	Female platform drivers (n = 30)
Age
18–25	6
26–35	8
Over 35	16
Years of working for Didi Chuxing	6
Less than 6 months	8
6 months to 1 year	11
1–3 years	5
3–6 years
Current work status
Working for Didi Chuxing only	10
Working for multiple ride-hailing platforms (e.g. Hua Xiao Zhu)	20
Working hours per day
16–20 hours per day	6
10–12 hours per day	16
Less than 6 hours per day	8
City
Chaozhou	1
Chengdu	1
Shandong	1
Shanghai	6
Shenzhen	18
Yunnan	2
Yulin	1
Marital status
Married with children	10
Single mother	15
Single	5
Educational attainment
Lower than high school	25
High school	5
Employment history
Prior experience in the manufacturing industry	13
Prior experience in the service industry	10
Prior experience as an entrepreneur	3
Prior experience in a corporate organisation	4
Hukou status
Local (Chaozhou, Chengdu, Shandong, Yunnan, Yulin)	6
Migrant (Shanghai, Shenzhen)	24

Work–Family Flexibility in the On-Demand Economy: The Struggle between the Social Reproduction Process and Surplus Production

The flexibility discourse emphasising a worker’s autonomy to choose what types of job they take, when and where they work, and how long they want to work, has attracted labour to participate in the gig economy and has increased labour productivity (Berg et al., 2018; Goods et al., 2019; Lehdonvirta, 2018). The flexible work schedule of the gig economy in particular, has allowed women to prioritise family and caregiving, and has enabled them to find a balance between unpaid reproductive work and paid work, so that they, and especially mothers, have been drawn to ‘flexible’ on-demand platform work in the gig economy (Churchill and Craig, 2019; Duffy, 2016; Hunt and Samman, 2020; Milkman et al., 2021). Hunt and Samman (2020) showed that female domestic workers in South Africa chose to work for on-demand platforms, so that they could take care of family and children alongside paid work, even though female domestic workers were forced into precarious situations, and often, underpaid and exploited in the labour process. Milkman et al. (2021) pointed out that women food delivery workers, while resenting the platform’s degrading treatment and low pay, nonetheless valued the scheduling autonomy of platform-based food delivery work, which allowed them to control their work schedules so as not to interfere with unpaid domestic responsibilities.

This study, alternatively, argues that women workers are drawn to on-demand platform work because of individual and family subsistence, rather than being attracted by work–family flexibility. Women workers are often caught up in the work–family conflict, which can scarcely ever be solved by ‘scheduling flexibility’ (Milkman et al., 2021) in the gig economy. In this research, female platform drivers were mostly working-class women with children. Many of them had joined the ride-hailing platforms because they wanted to earn a bit more money and they believed that platform-based work was fairly paid compared with factory work. Fang, a married woman with two children, said that

I came to Shenzhen ten years ago. I worked in the manufacturing industry for some years and I needed more money to provide for my family. My husband and I have to pay for the rent of the house, children’s education, and daily necessities. Everything needs money so we need to find better jobs and work harder. Didi is hard work, sitting in the car for 10 to 18 hours every day, but I earn a bit more than staying in the factory.

Fang’s experience was shared among other female platform drivers who were married with children, and had internally migrated to work in a city like Shenzhen. Women workers, especially working-class mothers, chose to work for the ride-hailing platform because they had no other means of production (Marx, 1971). They sold their labour-power to the ride-hailing platform to earn money so that they could maintain subsistence for themselves and non-labouring family members (Bhattacharya, 2017; Vogel, 2013). Female workers, however, in contrast to male workers, often struggled between paid work and unpaid reproductive work. Fang elaborated that

My husband and I both work for the Didi platform, but I am the one who takes care of the household and children. I wake up at 6 am, make breakfast for my husband and children, do laundry, prepare lunch boxes for my husband, and then drive and send my children to school at 8 am I drive Didi from 8 am to 12 am. I go to the market and buy groceries before picking up my children from school for lunch. Then, I drive my children to school after lunch, and then I drive Didi again. I pick up my children at 4 pm from school, and I prepare dinner for my children before I leave home for Didi. I usually return home around l am. I am trapped in this endless loop of domestic and Didi work every day.

Many female platform drivers shared Fang’s ‘endless loop’, and single-mother drivers, being both the breadwinner and caregiver of the family, faced a greater challenge in the work–family struggle. Yang, a single-mother driver with a 6-year-old boy, said that

I lived with my boy after I left my husband. It is very difficult for me and my boy to survive in this city without financial support. If I don’t work, I cannot eat. My son cannot eat. But I also need to take care of my son. So I drive Didi at midnight after I put my kid to bed and arrive home before my son wakes up in the morning. I spend some time with my boy in the morning and I drive my son to school. I work for more than 16 hours and sleep only a few hours every day from Monday to Friday. But, I stop working at the weekend so that I can accompany my boy, and sometimes, my female-driver friends come to my home and look after my son for a few hours if I need to work at the weekend.

Single-mother platform drivers experienced a constant struggle between reproduction of labour-power and surplus production, yet caring for their children often interfered with their waged work (Bhattacharya, 2017; Vogel, 2013).

Reproduction of Labour-Power and Communication Technologies: Individual Subsistence and Childcare Responsibilities

Gandini (2019) conceptualised a platform as an enclosed infrastructure that regulated how a task was done and how a worker was paid, and thus the ‘social relations between a worker and consumer became relations of production’ (p. 8). Li (2021), however, illustrates that the point of production goes beyond a platform. The platform’s managerial strategy and labour control exist outside the algorithmic logic. Li (2021) further demonstrates that Didi Chuxing utilises communication technologies, such as WeChat, to establish top-down corporate hegemonies, shaping and punishing platform drivers’ behaviours.

This study, contrasting with Li’s (2021) observation of male Didi drivers and their experience of using WeChat, demonstrates that female platform workers’ behaviours and labour productivity are not only determined by algorithmic logic and platform control, but also organised by the social reproduction process through communication technologies. The child-caring responsibilities shaped female platform drivers’ productivity in the labour process. Weng, a 40-year-old female platform driver and a mother of two, said that

We always do child-care arrangements through WeChat. It is easy and fast. Many female drivers are single mothers. We need to work hard so we can feed our children and the family. Sometimes, children have no one to look after them if their mothers drive for the platform all day. Well, I am a mother too, and I know how tough it is so I am happy to offer help.

Weng’s narrative was not uncommon in interviews with other female Didi drivers. Female Didi drivers used WeChat to organise cooperative child-caring responsibilities with other female drivers so that they could drive longer, or work at a particular time. The communicative space not only forged mutual support and created a community of shared responsibilities in the absence of a shared workplace, but also was an important arena to organise the reproduction of labour-power.

However, individual subsistence also affected female platform drivers’ productivity in the labour process. Jia, a 50-year-old female platform driver and a divorced mother with a child, said that

They [other female platform drivers] are so funny. We always share personal pictures and videos in the group chat. We always talk to each other. Well, this group chat is fun and entertaining. We are sisters. I am not sure if I could drive ten hours per day if I didn’t have their support and company. They make me happier and less bored when I am driving on the road.

Shui, a single, 25-year-old female platform driver, shared similar thoughts as Jia, and explained that

Sometimes, I am feeling sleepy and I want to go home to take nap in the afternoon. They [female platform drivers] will share photos and talk to me on WeChat, encouraging me to drive longer and not give up easily. I would be very lazy if I didn’t have their support and companionship.

Jia and Shui’s narratives were congruent with my participant observations in the female Didi driver’s WeChat group. Ding, another female platform driver, who was my interviewee as well as a good friend, invited me to sing for them from time to time. She would say, ‘Haley, sing for us! We are bored. We would love to hear your voice and some good Cantonese songs’. The communicative space, WeChat and TikTok, was, therefore, an important reproductive space for women drivers to refresh themselves and restore individual energy so that they could endure long hours of driving every day. This study demonstrates that the labour-power, mediated through the communicative space, can be reproduced beyond a household or a family unit, and that labour control operates beyond the app and Didi’s top-down corporate hegemonies.

Women’s Solidarity and Communicative Space: Resisting the Platform’s Control and Sexual Exploitation

Li’s (2021) study on Didi Chuxing showed that communication technologies were a totalising tool to intensify organisational control of and ideological manipulation of labour. The Didi company used WeChat to restrict bonds of solidarity between drivers, punish disobedient drivers, and kick uncooperative drivers out of the WeChat group to reduce the organisational capacity for collective resistance (Li, 2021). This study, however, argues that female workers are not easily manipulated and controlled by Didi’s top-down managerial control, instead, they negotiate WeChat’s insecurity and resist the Didi platform’s control to protect themselves and their children. When I started my participant observation, my presence in the female-only WeChat group for female Didi drivers immediately induced scepticism and confrontation. I was questioned by Sing, a female Didi driver, who asked me to show my Didi driving licence. I did not know that I had to be a female Didi driver to be part of the group. I honestly talked to Sing and the WeChat group leader, another female Didi driver, Wu, about the group invitation from Ding and my purpose for conducting research, and showed them my student card. I decided to leave the group out of respect. Wu and Sing later invited me to join the group again. Sing subsequently explained that

I am not hostile to you. I just want to protect my sisters [female platform drivers]. I have to make sure that we are safe and secure to talk and laugh in the group chat. Many of us are single mothers. We need to stand up and protect ourselves so that we can protect our children and family. We tried very hard to kick out a Didi manager before. You know . . . it is not convenient to have someone from the Didi platform always spy on our conversation and control our actions and decision. I had to make sure that you were not a manager from Didi.

Sing’s narrative indicated that the platform exercised organisational control and ideological manipulation of labour through communication technologies (Li, 2021), but the female platform drivers demonstrated individual agency, which was induced by their self-protection and childcare commitments, so that they were able to resist the platform’s despotic control. The communicative space was also a vulnerable place, where female platform workers could easily be sexually exploited by men. Sing continued that

Also, we kicked out some male Didi drivers, who masquerade as female drivers and joined this group chat before. This shit happened from time to time. These men sneak in, listening to our conservation and looking at our photos and videos.

Sing’s narrative echoed my participant observation when I learned about another man, Kai, who had pretended to be a female driver in the women-only WeChat group. Many female drivers talked about their bodies, such as how much fat they had gained and how ugly their bodies had become after driving for Didi for years. Kai then suggested that female drivers should share their belly and breast photos in the group chat, but his actions aroused suspicions. Some female drivers realised that Kai never sent voice messages; instead, he always typed messages for the group chat. Female Didi drivers then confronted Kai over his gender in the group, and Kai admitted that he was a male driver. Wu was very angry about this incident, and she said, ‘This assault is not acceptable. This is a humiliation to all women drivers. We are mothers. We must protect ourselves so that we can protect our families, or loved ones’. Wu asked me to find out who the female driver was who had introduced Kai to the group, and she kicked out both Kai and the female driver. The incident revealed that the ‘shared’ social reproduction process, maintaining individual subsistence and safety and caring for family members, created the potential for women workers to facilitate networks and collective actions in the gig economy’s labour process. Although the communicative space was highly insecure and vulnerable, female platform drivers were able to resist sexual exploitation, and it energised women’s solidarity.

Worker Resistance and Collective Agency: Fighting against Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Violence

Labour scholars have drawn attention to the types of research used to study platform workers’ resistance and struggle (Cant, 2020; Chen, 2018; Briziarelli, 2019; Moore and Joyce, 2020; Scholz, 2017; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020; Van Doorn, 2020). This research highlights how the social reproduction process organises labour resistance in a time of individual and collective crisis, and documents how female platform drivers resist sexual harassment and gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok. Examples of female drivers being harassed and violated on ride-hailing platforms are prevalent, but the platforms make inadequate efforts to ensure the safety of female drivers (Guancha, 2020; Musky, 2021). In my study, many female drivers recounted their experience of sexual harassment by male passengers. Mei, a female Didi driver, said that

There was a guy, a male passenger, asking for my phone number during the ride, and he refused to get out of the car after we arrived at his destination. I shouted at him and said, ‘you don’t have to pay for the ride. Just get out and leave my car!’ Well, he was a flirty asshole. How dare he think that I was easy.

Mei’s story was not unique. Many female Didi drivers also experienced similar sexual harassment. Another female Didi driver, Guo, complained in the WeChat group about a guy who had sexually harassed her:

Shit! A guy (a male passenger) touched my leg while I was driving. I was wearing ripped jeans, with a tiny hole in my trousers. The guy kept looking at my jeans and said, ‘You are so fashionable and stylish’. Then, he touched my exposed skin under my ripped jeans. I pulled the car over and confronted him. He apologised for his behaviour but I was so angry and I kicked him out of my car.

Mei and Guo confronted the male passengers and talked about their experiences on WeChat, yet did not report the cases of sexual harassment to the Didi platform. They explained that

It is useless to report to the Didi platform because they won’t help us. We have to deal with it by ourselves. We are single mothers. If we get hurt, who’s going to take care of my children? You have to be strong and tough for yourself and your family.

Mei and Guo’s stories demonstrated that single-mother workers’ individual subsistence and caring for family members had an impact on their immediate resistance against the harassers.

Female platform drivers not only exhibited workers’ resistance to sexual harassment but also expressed strong sisterhood and collective agency in coping with gender-based violence by utilising communication technologies. Despite Didi’s women-friendly policy – matching female passengers with female drivers at night – assaults and offences have often happened to female platform drivers. In this study, Fei, a 40-year-old female Didi driver who was married with two children, was hit by a male passenger because she confronted him about how his baby’s vomit had spoiled her car. Fei was hospitalised, and it was confirmed that her eardrum had been pierced and she had experienced a minor concussion as a result of the assault. Fei reached out to the Didi company and contacted the Didi union for help after the assault, but she received a cold response. She knew that the Didi company would not be helpful. Ning, a female platform driver and a good friend of Fei, then shared photos and videos of the incident in the WeChat group. Every female Didi driver learned about Fei’s story immediately. Ning said that

I have to share photos and videos and let my sisters [female Didi drivers] know what has happened to our sister. Fei has two children to look after and she is not able to seek help from her husband, the Didi platform, or the union at the moment. I am a mother too. I know her difficulty and struggle. I have to help her so I stopped working for a day to accompany Fei to the police station and hospital.

Like Ning, other female Didi drivers who had never met Fei stopped working and went directly to the police station and hospital to visit her. Some Didi drivers took care of Fei’s children while she was still at the hospital and police station. Many female drivers expressed care and concern about the accident, and provided legal and medical advice for Fei.

WeChat became a productive and social reproductive space, which located, motivated, and coordinated individuals collectively in ways that in the past were extremely difficult and costly to organise effectively because of their spatial dispersion in the labour process.

Some of the female platform drivers in the group suggested that they should speak out and highlight the case on social media, such as TikTok and the news forums. Molly, an influencer on TikTok, who was also a female platform driver and a member of the WeChat group, agreed to help, and posted the story of Fei on her TikTok account. Molly’s post attracted more than 300,000 views, and thousands of comments and likes. Later on, a Didi manager requested that she should take down the post. Molly, however, said that

They [Didi Chuxing] are always like this. The manager always asks me to take down different posts which are not beneficial to the platform. Well, I am not afraid of the platform or the manager. Many of us are single mothers working so hard for our families and children. I will not take down what I have posted. I am doing it for my sisters and our dignity as a female platform driver.

Fei’s story and Molly’s narrative indicate that the Didi platform often ignored drivers’ well-being, avoided dealing with violence towards female drivers, and regulated drivers’ behaviour on social media; however, the platform’s control was not always effective. This study shows that female platform drivers, who shared similar social reproduction process used communication technologies, such as TikTok and WeChat, to foster mutual support among one another, share care and create a community of shared responsibilities in the absence of a shared workplace. Women workers’ subsistence and childcare responsibilities, therefore, organised their collective agency and induced them to act for women’s solidarity (Vogel, 2013) in fighting against gendered-based violence in the labour process.

Discussion and Conclusion

This paper makes three important contributions to the labour process and social reproduction literature. First, this article is among the first attempts to conceptualise women workers’ labour process in China’s gig economy. The study of female platform drivers’ everyday struggles and resistance contributes to the growing literature on the gendered experience of gig work and work–family flexibility in on-demand platforms. Platform companies, such as Airbnb, Amazon, Uber, Didi Chuxing, Deliveroo and Meituan Dianping, have dominated the global labour market, and have offered gig jobs to millions of people, including female workers (Hunt and Samman, 2020). In concurrence with Smith (1987), this article encourages gender and labour scholars to understand more about women’s lived experiences and problematics in the gig economy, and to contextualise the women workers’ labour process in work–family struggles, labour exploitation, sexual harassment and gender-based violence.

Second, this article joins the efforts of Marxist feminists, and advances the discussion of capital–labour relations in gig economy literature (Anwar and Graham, 2020; Chen, 2018; Galière, 2020; Gandini, 2019; Heiland, 2021; Lei, 2021; Li, 2021; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Sun et al., 2021; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020; Van Doorn, 2017; Veen et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019), arguing that the relations of production and logics of capital accumulation are operated based on the reproduction of labour-power. This paper further contributes to social reproduction theory by theorising the communicative space as a point of production and reproduction of labour-power, which organises women workers’ productivity yet creates a potential for female platform drivers to coordinate childcare activities and to invigorate women’s solidarity.

Third, this article contributes to the study of labour agency, women’s solidarity and communication technologies. On one hand, this research shows that communication technologies are not a totalising tool to control labour as Li (2021) suggested, but rather an antagonistic means, which can be used to fight against platform control and sexual exploitation. On the other hand, this research reveals that the social reproduction process, especially self-protection and caring for children, engenders a strong spirit of labour agency and encourages women’s solidarity. Moreover, this study sheds light on how female drivers used communication technologies, such as WeChat and TikTok, to forge mutual support and to create a community of shared responsibilities in the absence of a shared workplace, so that they were able to mobilise collective action in a time of individual crisis.

This article concludes with two suggestions for future research. First, this article signifies the intricate relationship between the reproduction of capital and the reproduction of labour-power. Future studies could complicate the relations between the labour process and the social reproduction process and explicate how generational reproduction of labour-power impacts on female platform workers’ labour processes. Second, this article serves as a pioneer project to highlight women’s solidarity in China’s gig economy, hoping to prompt nuanced analyses of the relationship between class-conscious worker solidarity and gender-conscious worker solidarity in future research. Female Didi drivers expressed and forged gender solidarity as sisters in similar circumstances, such as when facing the struggle between unpaid reproductive work and surplus production, and when fighting against the platform’s control, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. In a classed and gendered society, where working-class women still need to sell their labour-power in exchange for individual and family subsistence, to be responsible for unpaid reproductive work, and to cope with patriarchal and oppressive gender relations in the workplace, it is imperative to explore the extent to which workers’ cooperatives, equal division of unpaid reproductive labour and democratic gender relations are the point of departure of class-conscious worker solidarity.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Haley Kwan

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