Researchers discuss working life and labour market  in series of talks

A fair and just working life is one of three areas of activity at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research. This year, a number of seminars and external events are being organised within this area on issues relating to working life and the labour market from a gender perspective. 

On 29 May, the seminar ‘Work and working life that does not fit in’ brought together researchers from several universities to discuss research at the intersection of gender, work and place. Kristina Zampoukos, Mid Sweden University and Kristina Johansson, Luleå University of Technology, also presented their respective current research projects. 

Constant digital monitoring and evaluation 

Image

Gig economy and platform companies are the focus of Kristina Zampoukos' current research project. A lecturer in Human Geography at Mid Sweden University, she is currently investigating the conditions and work environment of bicycle delivery drivers, cleaning ladies and web designers/copywriters who all work for platform companies. The gig economy is often described as homogeneous in the media debate, and to a large extent also in the research literature, but the labour market is also segmented, she says.  

The cleaners in the study were mostly women, often with a foreign background and on conditional residence permits. The bike messengers were more often men, often students or people who had recently arrived in Sweden on a student visa, but who take gig jobs while waiting for ‘a real job’ that will allow them to stay in the country. Web designers/copywriters, on the other hand, were mostly Swedish-born students in education who use a platform company to supplement their income, or to build up their own business and client base.   

‘Who does what, where and under what conditions is influenced by factors such as gender, class and race, just like in the “regular labour market”,’ said Kristina Zampoukos. 

The cleaners and bike delivery drivers are booked on a job-by-job basis via apps or websites. They move around the city and across national borders and are monitored and evaluated remotely. In her research, Kristina Zampoukos shows how workers working under these conditions adapt their bodies to the surveillance. Data is collected on work pace, work performance, customer service and geographical location. Surveillance is also carried out via alarms and cameras in private homes. This type of work creates vulnerability in several ways.  

‘You have no employment or workplace and are not part of the social security system, so you are very precarious. It creates a worker who is flexible, customer-oriented and hard-working to the extent that it affects both their health and the possibility of having a decent life,’ said Kristina Zampoukos. 

The working conditions mean they are treated like machines, rather than people, she said. For example, many of the cleaners are forced to eat lunch on the bus or standing outside a client's home.   

‘Maybe it will be easier to consume this kind of service if you don't really have to recognise that there is a human being at the other end of the app,’ Zampoukos said. 

‘Some are left behind’ in low-paid, high workload jobs 

Image

Kristina Johansson is Senior Lecturer in Human Work Science, at Luleå University of Technology. Her research focus is on working life, gender and inequality, which she examines in relation to a number of industries. 

In the recently completed research project ‘Commerce 4.0? Work environment and inequality in e-commerce‘, she has together with Klara Rydström and Tiziana Sardiello, Luleå University of Technology, and Jennie Jackson and Svend Erik Mathiassen at the University of Gävle, investigated warehouse workers’ work environment.  

‘Previous research on e-commerce has mainly focused on consumer needs and behaviour,’ says Kristina Johansson. ‘It has been about logistics solutions and economic business models, but less about how the emergence of e-commerce affects retail work. What work is being created and what is the working environment like?’

The shift from storefront service to ‘behind the scenes’ warehouses is having an impact on who is hired to do the job. Data from Statistics Sweden show that more men work in e-commerce than in shops. More foreign-born people work in warehouses on the floor, while managers and service staff are more often Swedish-born. Previous research from the retail sector has shown that women have more repetitive tasks than men, which in turn leads to higher workloads. In e-commerce, the differences between men and women working in pick and pack were found to be smaller.  

‘Men could to some extent claim more varied tasks, but on the whole, women and men had fairly similar tasks,’ says Kristina Johansson.  

According to the research project, what created differences in the work environment and working conditions between different groups of employees in the e-commerce sector seems to be more about who worked shorter or longer periods in the warehouse. While interviews with both employers and employees show a view of e-commerce as a transitory profession, with low pay and high workloads, it was also clear that some people remained.  

‘We can see that inequality in e-commerce is about people with limited labour market mobility getting ‘stuck’ there,’ says Kristina Johansson. ‘Not because they are happier than anyone else but because they cannot get other jobs and here we see that issues of racialisation come into play. More research is needed, but our study suggests that this ‘getting stuck’ more often affects employees who could not pass as ‘Swedes’.

Gender, work and place in journal for gender studies

For several years, Lund University has been home to the journal Tidskrift för genusvetenskap, which is one of the Nordic region's largest peer-reviewed research journals on gender research. The theme of the upcoming issue is ‘Gender, work and place’ and the guest editors are Ulrika Jansson, investigator at the secretariat and coordinator of the activity area A fair and just working life, and Lena Grip, Karlstad University.

More talks on a fair and just working life

This autumn, the secretariat's area A fair and just working life is organising several seminars and panel discussions at, and in connection with, the The Swedish Forum for Human Rights in Skellefteå.