The platform economy-a phenomenon attracting public and academic attention alike-is perceived as a tremendous novelty. The Internet and other IT technologies that bring such platforms alive are said to determine their innovative and modern label. This paper argues otherwise. The role of information infrastructure cannot be properly analysed without discovering the content of labour relations behind it. From the perspective of this paper, the latter is similar to the historical putting-out system. The system that arose in the 18th century and whose participants came from the ranks of formally free, home base labour was strikingly congruous with the modern work-on-demand system. The paper analyzes the features of the contemporary gig economy and points out similarities and differences between the historical putting-out system and its digital incarnation. In conclusion, the paper makes some predictions regarding work on platforms.
The rise of the platform economy has brought about crowdwork as a new form of flexible work where individuals solve specific problems or provide specific services or products in exchange for payment via online platforms. Survey data for crowdworkers in Germany collected by the 'Digital Future' collaborative research unit are used to compare gender inequalities in hourly pay among crowdworkers sampled from a marketplace platform and a micro-task platform. The results reveal that fathers earn higher hourly pay than mothers and childless women and men, but only on the marketplace platform. These differences can partly be explained by fathers being better positioned in the overall labour market and fathers' investment patterns in crowdwork, with longer seniority on the platform and quick task performance, which results in higher hourly pay. Investments in crowdwork and overall labour market positioning are only of modest importance on the micro-task platform. This points to different organisational settings and inequality regimes on the two platforms under study.
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