Angi, a delivery person for three years on various home delivery platforms, has in this time developed a whole series of strategies fully aimed at appearing as unnoticeable as possible to avoid harassment situations. She tries to keep a low profile and, in some cases, be elusive: she does not go to the meeting points where the rest of the people gather. ridersactively seeks to wear clothes that go as unnoticed as possible, and has already studied in which cases he can have a relaxed attitude with the client in question, and in which he should, practically, not speak a word with him. “As you can see in the photo that it is a woman who is going to come, obviously some clients already open the door in another way, and they can do it without clothes.” He claims that dozens of men have received him half-naked, in their underwear.
“When they greet you without clothes or with that kind of attitude, I don’t say anything at all. I mark my distance, give them their order, and immediately leave. I try not to even look at them. It is very hard to work as rider being both a migrant and a woman, especially when you deal with this type of people who want to humiliate you.” She asserts that she knows of many cases that her colleagues have told her in which one of their accounts was ‘rented’ by a boy – ‘renting’ an account to someone whose situation in the country is regularized is the way in which many workers who are not able to work on these platforms.
On these types of occasions, the client often sees a photo of the person renting the account (for example, a woman), but the person who arrives at the home is a man: “So there are clients who come out in that suggestive way, but when They see that the person who is going to deliver your order is a boy, they get frustrated and change their attitude. That happens a lot of times,” he says.
Nuria Soto was also working as rider for various platforms in the sector. After his experiences, he founded the Mensakas cooperative —which promotes a distribution model “within the social and solidarity economy”–. He states that “these cases are not as isolated as one might think. Every female rider or almost every woman can tell about a situation like this.” By not agreeing to their suggestion, Soto explains, they sometimes give them a bad rating on the platform to “punish” them for it. In the cooperative they have created a gender commission to address these issues.
One time I went to deliver and there were some guys smoking marijuana, all in their underwear, and they told me that I had to serve them food at the table, that I had to go inside.
Yuly, rider
It has also happened to Yuly, a former delivery driver. “There are very abusive men. One time I went to deliver and there were some guys smoking marijuana, all in their underwear, and they told me that I had to serve them food at the table, that I had to go inside. I told them: ‘just pay me and I’ll give you your food,’” he says. On another occasion a client received him completely naked.
There are also occasions when the customer begins to write to them through the platform: “You call them to let them know that you are going to deliver the order, and then they start to write to you and tell you things like: ‘You’re pretty, I’m interested in you, we’re going to go out,’” he says.
“Meeting points”, potentially hostile places
But unpleasant situations do not end when leaving residential areas, but continue in places where men and women riders They are located to wait to receive orders – they are generally areas of high demand. That’s why Angi, he explains, tries not to surround himself with anyone. “I’m always alone. I try to avoid crowds riders. I do it on purpose to avoid these things because if you arrive at a restaurant and they are all gathered there, you feel that they are already looking at you or start talking to each other while looking at you.”
“There are situations that occur with one’s own colleagues,” explains Nuria, who states that she has come to feel “helpless.”
Given the harassing attitudes on the part of colleagues, since you are not in a workplace and they are not officially considered colleagues, there is no opportunity to start any process. That leaves you a little helpless.
Nuria Soto
— Rider and one of the founders of the Mensakas cooperative
However, they do not perceive that they are protected. “Situations have arisen with some colleagues who may not be very right in the head. Attitudes so uncomfortable that, for example, a classmate and I had to be forced to block another classmate because he became obsessed or another who turned his face away when you were going to give him two kisses,” he says. “Given these attitudes, since you are not in a workplace and they are not officially considered colleagues, there is no opportunity to start any process. “That leaves you a little defenseless in this sense,” she complains.
Other areas of the public space also become hostile, as pointed out by the delivery woman, who recounts how cars often harass her on the road through harassment, intimidation, shouting, or spitting, and, she affirms, almost 100% In most cases these attitudes occur on the part of men. In her entire career, only one woman has shown hostile attitudes towards her on the road: “We are talking about the fact that we are in a hyper-masculinized sector and we do an activity that is considered mostly for men, occupying public space all day long. All this makes our activity more difficult due to all the types of comments you may encounter, from the strongest to the most paternalistic.”
Of the four delivery women that elDiario.es has asked, one, Sara (fictitious name because she wants to remain anonymous), states that she has not noticed “a difference in treatment due to gender by clients,” although explains that this perception could be attributed to the fact that she usually works through accounts rentedusually of boys, so their profile photo appears.
Helpless due to the lack of protocols
“The fact of not having a workplace, an equality plan, an anti-harassment protocol, or a series of things that correspond to the recognition of the employment relationship, this affects us workers more,” denounces the founder of Mensakas.
One of the main drawbacks in the platform economy, all of them say, is not having someone to turn to for problems that may occur. “Support never responds.” If we do not start by addressing the visible ‘tip of the iceberg’ of the problem, which is, they believe, poor working conditions, we cannot resolve everything underneath, they explain, and they defend that a simple measure that could be applied to achieve reduce the number of cases of harassment would be to stop showing the profile photo or gender of the riders since, they maintain, “it is not that important.”
According to the report carried out in 2020 by the Catalan Workers’ Commissions, Delivery drivers and digital platform delivery workers: Working conditions, needs, demands and perspectives61% of the riders interviewed (of which 6 out of 10 were men) agreed that they suffered discrimination or sexism simply because they were women.
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