Editorial summary. This is our text summary of an article published by frontiers-orgpsych. Charts, figures, and the author’s full voice are at the original — read it there .
Editorial verdict
Methodologically sound scoping review with transparent limitations, but the small sample size (16 studies) and ride-hailing sector overrepresentation constrain the generalizability of conclusions — findings are directionally credible but not yet definitive.
Executive summary
This scoping review, authored by Bajpai Tewari and colleagues and published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology (2026), examines safety concerns and policy responses affecting women in the gig economy. The authors argue that formal protective structures are largely absent, and that existing legal and policy frameworks inadequately address the harassment and safety risks faced by female platform workers. Employing PRISMA-ScR 2020 methodology across Scopus, Web of Science, and APA PsycINFO databases, the review identified 16 eligible studies from 482 retrieved records. Key findings document pervasive sexual harassment, physical assault, cyber violence, and income sacrifice as women trade earnings for personal safety. Safety strategies operate at individual, platform, and collective levels, with individual-level burdens falling disproportionately on women workers. Platform-level interventions such as panic buttons and GPS tracking are characterized as reactive and inadequate. The authors conclude that effective governance requires a hybrid multi-actor institutional model combining legally enforced platform accountability, worker union participation, and gender-sensitive urban infrastructure, with solutions contextualized to specific geographic and sectoral conditions.
Key insights
- 1Women in the gig economy face compounded safety vulnerabilities—including sexual harassment, physical assault, cyber violence, and customer anonymity risks—that are structurally enabled by worker misclassification as independent contractors, which limits platform liability.
- 2Algorithmic rating systems create exploitable power imbalances, compelling women to tolerate harassment to avoid negative reviews and income loss, effectively normalizing abuse within platform governance structures.
- 3Worker solidarity and informal collective networks (e.g., WhatsApp and WeChat groups) are identified as more practically effective safety mechanisms than platform-provided tools, yet lack formal institutional backing or recognition.
- 4A significant gender-based earnings gap persists in gig platforms—7% among Uber drivers in the U.S. and 15% in Chinese platform services—driven by occupational stereotyping, caregiving responsibilities, and safety-motivated restrictions on nighttime work.
- 5Global South workers face disproportionately greater safety vulnerability due to weaker labor protections, inadequate urban infrastructure, and limited redressal mechanisms compared to Global North counterparts.
Practical takeaways
- The review documents that women gig workers adopt individual defensive strategies—avoiding nighttime operations, sharing locations, carrying protective tools, and adopting masculine appearances—as primary safety responses in the absence of adequate platform or state protections.
- Platform-level safety tools such as GPS tracking, panic buttons, audio-video surveillance, and gender-segregated service options (e.g., female-only ride options in India, China, and Indonesia) exist but are characterized in the literature as reactive and insufficient to address root causes of safety inequity.
Frameworks mentioned
Intersectionality
A theoretical framework, foundational work attributed to Crenshaw, applied in the review to explain how overlapping social identities—including gender, race, and migration status—compound vulnerabilities experienced by female gig workers.
PRISMA-ScR
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (2020 version), used as the methodological framework governing database searches, screening, and synthesis procedures in this review.
References
- Crenshaw (1990).Intersectionality (foundational theory).
- European Union (2024).EU Platform Work Directive.
- Government of Ontario (2022).Ontario's Digital Platform Workers' Rights Act.
- Government of India (2020).India's Code on Social Security.
- PRISMA (2020).PRISMA 2020 guidelines.
Source & Provenance
frontiers-orgpsych
Priya Das
July 27, 2026
Meta-Analysis/Review
Global
Original source metadata is preserved. AI analysis is generated separately.
Like this? Get the Monday Decision Brief — free, every week.
No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Rate this article
Want the full article? Read it at the original source — free, no paywall.
Read original article