A exploração do trabalho e a feminização da pobreza das mulheres motoristas em plataformas digitais

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the process of feminization of poverty, understood as the social phenomenon in which women, especially those who are heads of households, independently undertake both paid and unpaid work for their own subsistence and that of their dependents. The study focuses on analyzing the process of female impoverishment associated with the increase in single-parent households, in which there is exclusively the presence of economically responsible adult women, without male co-responsibility. In this context, it investigates how new forms of work organization, especially work mediated by digital platforms, have impacted the reality of these women, with a specific focus on app-based drivers. The overall objective is to verify how the process of feminization of poverty among digital platform drivers, who are heads of households, has been impacted by new forms of work organization, considering, especially, the effects of care work on the productive activity of these women. The hypothesis is that the 2017 Labor Reform, by loosening rights and promoting the intensification of informality and precariousness, combined with the economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed significantly to the deepening of the feminization of poverty, especially among female heads of households engaged in platform work. This reality is particularly evident among female app drivers, who, pressured by the overload of care work, the reduction of opportunities in the formal market, and the lack of effective social protection, resort to platform work as a survival strategy. However, this inclusion does not represent effective social inclusion, but rather the reproduction of historical dynamics of precariousness, economic subordination, and social exclusion. The research argues that, far from representing an emancipatory alternative, platform-mediated work reinforces mechanisms of exploitation, deepens gender, class, and racial inequalities, and shifts the costs and risks of the activity to the workers themselves, who face economic instability, double or triple shifts, and the absence of minimum labor guarantees. Methodologically, an interdisciplinary, exploratory approach was adopted, developed using the hypothetical-deductive method, using bibliographical, documentary, and questionnaire research as data collection tools.