Gendered Impacts of AI-Driven Work Platforms: Income Security, Digital Skills, and Workplace Voice

Abstract

AI-powered work platforms are quickly redefining the landscape of labour markets, fundamentally changing how workers approach tasks, how they get paid, how they learn digital skills, and how they voice concerns in the workplace.AI work platforms are changing labour markets in fundamental ways, affecting how workers approach tasks, how they're paid, how they acquire digital skills, and how they voice workplace concerns. But these changes are not gender neutral; that is, the social, economic and technological conditions of platform work are different for women and men. This research focuses on how AI-driven platform work affects gender equality, particularly in terms of income security, digital competencies, and voice in the workplace. These findings show that women platform workers are likely to experience relatively greater income volatility, lower average earnings, and higher likelihood of unpaid or under-recognized digital work. While gendered opportunity structures are created in AI-driven platforms, the results reveal that such opportunity structures are more pronounced among men, as women exhibit less confidence in their digital skills, fewer examples of work they can see as digitally available, less access to higher-paying categories of work on the platforms and less time available to engage with them. The analysis also shows that digital skills have a strong positive effect on income security, however women report less access to further opportunities for developing their digital skills and fewer opportunities for accessing algorithmically rewarded tasks. Workplace voice is also a key issue; women workers say they are less involved in decisions made on platforms, have less knowledge of platform grievance processes, and feel less confident in challenging automated ratings, restrictions on accounts, and unfair allocation of tasks. In conclusion, the study indicates that AI-powered work platforms can perpetuate current labour market inequalities if they are not implemented with gender in mind in platform governance, digital training, and ensuring the protection of workers. The paper illuminates ongoing discussions on algorithmic management, platform labour and inclusive digital economies by highlighting the need to consider income security, skills and voice in relation to each other to grasp the gendered impacts of algorithmic work.