Gender and Anticipatory Labour in the Gig Economy: How Employability Is Unequally Performed by Women and Men on Project‐Based Platforms

Abstract

Work mediated by digital labour platforms is often framed as flexible and autonomous, yet accessing paid tasks commonly requires extensive unpaid effort. Drawing on 65 qualitative interviews with Australian workers on project-based platforms (including Airtasker, Fiverr and Freelancer), we develop the concept of anticipatory labour: the unpaid, future-oriented work through which workers search for tasks, evaluate jobs and clients, and negotiate terms before any paid work begins. Anticipatory labour is not peripheral but constitutive of participation in platform labour markets, demanding sustained time, attention and emotional energy amid uncertainty and competition. We show that anticipatory labour is gendered. While all workers engage in these practices, women perform more anticipatory labour and experience it more intensely, often alongside unpaid domestic and care labour. Women's anticipatory labour is also more affectively charged, shaped by hope, anxiety and self-doubt as they manage risks to reputation, safety and future employability. Men, by contrast, report less anticipatory labour and more confidence in securing work. We argue that anticipatory labour operates as a mechanism of platform governance, shifting responsibility for employability onto workers and converting unpaid time and emotion into the conditions of participation in the gig economy. In doing so, platforms reproduce gendered inequalities while sustaining the promise of flexibility.