We’re Not All Entrepreneurs
Yawning Gaps in the Digital“Platform Economy”
The ideal of entrepreneurship permeates contemporary culture and society — from online retailers championing no-collar uniforms to college courses hyping the spirit of passion-fueled careerism. In 2014, Mattel even crafted a self-enterprising prototype of “America’s favorite doll”: the smartphone-toting Entrepreneur Barbie. The prospect of “being one’s own boss” is especially seductive to younger generations, who clamor for the freedom to work from home and the flexibility to set one’s own schedule. According to a 2015 study conducted at Bentley University, roughly two-thirds of those aged eighteen to thirty-four aspire to start their own business.
This pervasive sentiment of entrepreneurship has been amplified by digital media’s meritocratic promise: the assurance that with enough hard work, anyone can make a living in the online economy. Searching for the next “Big Job” no longer requires us to go “right around the corner”; instead, we’re just an app-click away from making it.
Yet Pew’s newly released report on “Gig Work, Online Selling, and Home Sharing” reveals how fragmented technology-enabled independent work really is. Though nearly a quarter of those surveyed have generated some form of income from the sprawling “platform economy,” there are marked — and at times, staggering — disparities across age, race, class, and more. Such gaps are configured by what the researchers identify as labor platforms (“where users contribute their time and effort”) and capital platforms (“where they contribute their goods or possessions”) (see page 4 of the report). More than half of those in the former category consider “gig work” to be “essential” or “important” to their financial circumstances. This sort of digital task work is more prevalent among black (14%) and Latino (11%) workers, compared with white workers (5%); moreover, gig workers tend to come from low-income households and lack a college education. Like other forms of independent employment— such as freelancing or contract-based creative work— the platform economy’s provisions often translate into precarious, benefits-stripped employment. Indeed, compared with all adults, the digital task workers are significantly less likely to be covered by health insurance (87% to 77%, respectively), to have a retirement plan (40% to 27%), or to have a pension (22% to 8%).
A key takeaway from Pew’s report, then, is how much variability exists in this new employment economy. In the popular imagination, tech-enabled work is framed as an expression of self-enterprise and valorized with cutesy portmanteaus like Etsypreneuer, eBaypreneur, or Uberprenuer. Yet the survey revealed the durability of existing markers of privilege in defining the type of work likely to be done — and its significance to the livelihoods of providers. Deskilled, physical tasks like furniture delivery or participation in on-demand drive services must be understood as categorically different from peddling second-hand goods on eBay.
The gender disparity is telling, too. Not only is online selling more prevalent among whites, those with college educations, and those with higher incomes, but there is a key distinction between male and female participants in the capital platform economy. Though women have only a slight majority in the online marketplace (56%), 29% of female online sellers (compared with just 11% of men) described social media as“extremely important” to their activities.
The fact that females dominate personal selling via social media networks reaffirms the construction of women as innately trustworthy and communicative brand advocates. Though feminized industries like beauty have long wielded female influencers as an “authentic” sales force, today’s advertisers and marketers increasingly try to harness their socially networked capital through multi-level marketing — think Tupperware parties for the socially-mediated set. Companies like Rodan + Fields or Scentsy deploy narratives of female entrepreneurship: the former suggests participants can be the “CEO of You” while the latter offers the rousing assurance that “you can be an entrepreneur.” But these casual sellers, like the Pew survey respondents who view online sales opportunities as “just for fun,” are fundamentally distinct from individuals who understand these activities as indispensable to their livelihoods.
For many — especially those from structurally disadvantaged positions, flexibility is more than just a job perk: Women disproportionately share the burden for care labor — including parenting and the responsibility for aging family members — and it is those from less privileged circumstances who turn to online selling out of necessity. Relatedly, those with a disability or chronic health conditions were much more likely to describe online selling as essential/important (33% and 55% respectively) than those who describe it as “nice to have” (12% and 37%). As Siddharth Suri and Mary L. Gray note, “clearly, people do this kind of work because they need the job, they need to control their schedules and/or they don’t have a lot of employment options in their hometowns.”
Freelance writer Sarah Grey reflected on the importance of flexible work arrangements for care-givers and those with chronic health conditions in a compelling essay titled “Between a Boss and a Hard Place.” She identified some of the primary reasons the employment economy “squeezes women out of the workplace,” including “lack of paid maternity leave, inadequate time off, little flexibility, and unequal pay that doesn’t always cover the cost of childcare.” Such realities, unfortunately, are often concealed by the romanticized draw of independent work.
Far too often, terms like “gig economy,” “sharing economy,” or “new economy,” are used interchangeably to index the potential for self-employment, or — to use its euphemism — “entrepreneurship.” Yet it is this very imprecision that veils the gendered, raced, and classed nature of self-enterprise — which together render notions of digital meritocracy superficial. Pew’s latest findings confirm a more essential truth about independent work: the Difference Between a Freelancer and an Entrepreneur is not about scale or division of labor. Nor is it about an ethic of bootstrapping. It’s about privilege.
Brooke Erin Duffy, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Inequality. Her forthcoming book (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work explores the culture and politics of the digital labor market.
Points: For more thoughts on the so-called gig economy — and responses to the new report, “Gig Work, Online Selling and Home Sharing,” from Pew Research Center — see:
- Spike in Online Gig Work by Siddharth Suri and Mary L. Gray
- Phones, but No Papers by Julia Ticona
- “These Days, Everyone Needs a Side Hustle” by Dan Greene
- Imagining the Sharing Economy by Caroline Jack
- Toward a Just Future for Platform Labor by Niels van Doorn
