TY - JOUR
T1 - Making markets gendered
T2 - Kathmandu’s ride-sharing platforms through a gender lens
AU - Hamal, Pritee
AU - Huijsmans, Roy
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of making markets from a gender perspective. We do so in relation to Kathmandu’s ride-sharing platforms which have emerged in a context of changing gender regimes. Concerns about women’s safety in public transport and recognition of women as a sizeable market-share has led one platform to build gender into its digital interface. For the other platform, gender is indirectly written into its digital design. The neat representation of gender as a bounded category at the level of the platforms’ digital interface obfuscates gender as a situated practice on and off the back of the motorbike. Analysing the placed performance of the platforms illuminates ways of doing gender necessary for (re)producing ride-sharing as a flexible and gendered good in a way that does not negatively affect women’s honour in Nepal’s conservative gender regime. We also flag potential gender based violence if actors’ main interests are different from or go beyond realising ridesharing as a gendered product.
AB - In this article we develop the theoretical premise that platform companies are in the business of making markets from a gender perspective. We do so in relation to Kathmandu’s ride-sharing platforms which have emerged in a context of changing gender regimes. Concerns about women’s safety in public transport and recognition of women as a sizeable market-share has led one platform to build gender into its digital interface. For the other platform, gender is indirectly written into its digital design. The neat representation of gender as a bounded category at the level of the platforms’ digital interface obfuscates gender as a situated practice on and off the back of the motorbike. Analysing the placed performance of the platforms illuminates ways of doing gender necessary for (re)producing ride-sharing as a flexible and gendered good in a way that does not negatively affect women’s honour in Nepal’s conservative gender regime. We also flag potential gender based violence if actors’ main interests are different from or go beyond realising ridesharing as a gendered product.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107890333&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1931046
DO - 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1931046
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107890333
VL - 29
SP - 670
EP - 692
JO - Gender, Place, and Culture
JF - Gender, Place, and Culture
SN - 0966-369X
IS - 5
ER -