Mexico’s women gig workers want new app algorithms to stamp out the discrimination and violence they risk on the job. — Reuters
MEXICO CITY: Delivery driver Daniela Orozco decided to wear baggy hoodies and keep her helmet on to avoid the unwanted advances and slurs that men threw at her during the risky night shift in Mexico City.
“The way I usually dress is masculine because I ... deliver at night. So it’s a way of camouflaging myself to avoid the risk or visibility of being identified as a woman and becoming an easy target,” said Orozco, 31, who has been delivering food on her motorbike for Uber Eats for nearly three years.
Orozco is one of a growing number of female delivery drivers pushing companies such as Uber, DiDi and Rappi for changes to app algorithms to better protect them against the discrimination and violence they say is routine at work.
Unwanted sexual come-ons, assault, excessive workloads, naked customers and violence are all part of the job, they say, hoping a wider government plan to reform labour laws will also address deep-seated gender imbalance in the booming gig sector.
Backed by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the labour reform bill is due to come before Congress this year, with the promise of sweeping reform.
It aims to grant gig workers access to state healthcare, housing credits, paid maternity leave, and insurance against road accidents, among other benefits.
But female delivery workers also want deeper changes to tackle what they see as entrenched sexism on online platforms in a country with high levels of violence against women.
This includes modifying app algorithms to assign them smaller packages, ensure they are not sent into areas with high rates of gender-based crime, and a guarantee of equal pay.
“Women earn lower wages, they face sexual harassment and they face different ways of discrimination,” said Kruskaya Hidalgo, researcher at the Solidarity Center, an organisation supporting the creation of app worker unions in Mexico City.
Orozco said women commonly face sexual harassment from all sides: fellow delivery workers, restaurant staff and clients.
A 2023 study shows that one in five female gig workers in Mexico City had experienced sexual harassment on the job, be it slurs, unwanted advances, or even customers opening the door to a delivery fully naked.
“We’ve heard of cases where male clients, upon seeing that a woman is delivering, ask her to bring the order inside,” said Alejandra Ancheita, director at ProDESC, an organisation that campaigns for gig worker rights in Mexico.
“Once inside, they close the door and take advantage of the situation to harass or even sexually assault the worker,” she said.
While the apps have emergency buttons connected to Mexico City’s police department and ambulance services, workers said they rarely get help in time.
This year, there have been an average of 28.3 daily cases of rape, sexual abuse and sexual harassment in Mexico City, according to official crime statistics.
Reporting sexual violence is hard, Ancheita said, as workers fear they might lose their job and must also prove they entered an apartment by invitation and did not overstep job boundaries.
And while apps might suspend a client account due to any harassment, they do not restrict the same client from opening a new account under a different name, according to Ancheita, so the risk of repeat offending has not gone away.
To help tackle this issue, two restaurants in the capital have partnered with the National Union for App Workers (UNTA) to introduce the “Puntos Naranjas” or Orange Spots initiative.
This allows women gig workers to ask the restaurants for help, use the restroom, charge their phones and take a break.
These safe spaces are also a refuge for female migrant delivery workers, who are at higher risk of racism and sexism, according to Hidalgo, the Solidarity Center researcher.
But this falls well short of government and tech companies specifically addressing women’s needs, said Shaira Garduno, delivery workers and gender secretary of UNTA.
“Men don’t suffer what women suffer,” Garduno said.
Biased algorithms
App worker Orozco said she was once assigned a delivery of three 10-liter water jugs, which she could not fit in her bag.
Orozco now cancels orders that are too heavy, but says this means she is penalised by the algorithm so wins less orders.
“It’s harder for a woman to carry that weight than it is for a man. I can’t carry that weight,” she said.
Orozco also avoids delivering to dangerous areas in the city, such as Tepito or the Iztapalapa neighbourhood, which she described as akin to sending drivers “to the slaughterhouse”.
If she is driving even close to violent neighbourhoods such as these, Orozco said she turns off the app until she reaches safer areas where she will take orders again.
Garduno, gender secretary at UNTA, wants firms to develop algorithms that consider the gender, weight, height and available transport before assigning women deliveries.
She also wants apps to stop sending women drivers into known hotspots where they face a greater risk of crime.
The labour law reform would introduce contracts between workers and the apps in which the “rules of the algorithm are clearly explained”, said labour Secretary Marath Bolanos in October. “What are we seeking with this? For there to be clarity on the job rules.”
Labour rights groups, which have fought for years to improve algorithm transparency, hope this insight into the app’s vital organs will shed light on the pay gap, the cause of negative ratings or why driver accounts get suspended.
“We need to understand how these algorithms are constructed and what are the biases behind them,” said Hidalgo.
Mexican women gig workers earn 25% less than men – an average of 1,324 pesos (RM290 or US$65) a week – according to researcher Rosario Aparicio’s study on female gig workers in Mexico City.
“Women still earn less despite doing the same job than men on the same schedule,” said Aparicio, whose report ran in the Brazilian Journal Of Sociology.
The study partly attributes the pay gap to care work, unpaid labour that is largely done by women. About half of all female gig workers in Mexico City have children or parents who need their help, so female drivers must take more breaks.
Likewise, women are less likely to own a motorcycle, and instead move around the city using slower means of transport like bicycles or by foot.
Orozco said apps are also blind to other challenges women face – if women on their periods spend 10 hours working without access to a restroom, they can develop infections.
Orozco said she opted to stay off work during her period as it was simply too hard to access a safe toilet when tearing around the city at pace.
If women win greater equality in the wider labour reform package, Garduno hopes all workers will rise on the back of it.
“My hope for the future is...that the government will demand the apps to recognise us (as workers) and give us the benefits that we need,” said Garduno. – Thomson Reuters Foundation
