Digital platforms: jobs, opportunities and gender

With the emergence in recent years of jobs associated with digital platforms, modalities such as teleworking or flexible working hours have become more established. 

Jobs associated with digital platforms have experienced significant growth in recent years, thanks to the expansion of technology and the digitization of various sectors.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), this has generated more opportunities to access jobs with more flexible hours and combine income generation with other activities such as vocational training, political participation and care responsibilities. 

However, ECLAC noted, it is important to keep in mind that it can also be a way of not altering gender roles and the almost exclusive responsibility of women in caregiving. 

In this regard, ECLAC recommended designing co-responsibility measures, both gender and social, considering that labor inclusion policies could tend to reverse the traditional segmentation of sectors and the labor market. 

This is possible both through incentive mechanisms to encourage women to enter masculinized sectors, with higher degrees of formalization and higher salaries, and through measures that promote the incorporation of men in tasks that have historically been feminized by women. 

Digital platforms

In this context, ECLAC believes it is vital to strengthen the paid care sector by recognizing, rewarding and representing those employed in the sector. 

Moving towards a care society implies recognizing the work necessary for social reproduction and how it sustains life and economies. 

It also seeks to integrate care policies, digital inclusion and labor participation of women as fundamental pillars. 

Work and gender

The Buenos Aires Commitment, agreed by ECLAC member states, reflects the consensus at the level of the countries of the region on «the call to promote recovery plans with affirmative actions to achieve substantive equality, which promote comprehensive care systems, decent work and the full, meaningful and equal participation of women in leadership positions in strategic sectors of the economy to achieve a transformative recovery with gender equality aimed at the sustainability of life and to move towards a care society».