The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers[Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues]

The growth of the “gig” economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favour women. We explore this by examining labour supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the U.S. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst drivers. We show that this gap can be entirely attributed to three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences and constraints over where to work (driven largely by where drivers live and, to a lesser extent, safety), and preferences for driving speed. We do not find that men and women are differentially affected by a taste for specific hours, a return to within-week work intensity, or customer discrimination. Our results suggest that, in a “gig” economy setting with no gender discrimination and highly flexible labour markets, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.