Exploring the many challenges women face when choosing to freelance, and what the solutions could be for them to sustain their career
Freelancing is a form of work in which one is not committed to a particular employer long-term and is considered self-employed. In the digital age, online-based freelancing has become a popular career choice. These freelancers are primarily associated with IT-related work outsourced by online platforms.
Bangladesh has considerable potential to create employment for its large young population through online freelancing. The country ranked 8th in the 2019 Global Gig-Economy Index, published by Payoneer, for freelancing.
But women are severely underrepresented in the freelancing sector of the country. According to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division of the government, there are 650,000 freelancers in Bangladesh. Among them, only 9% are female.
This is unfortunate because, for many reasons, freelancing can be lucrative for women in a job market that offers very few job opportunities to women.
It allows women the necessary flexibility to perform their household responsibilities alongside their professional work. And the vast majority of freelancing also does not require a high level of technical skills, which both men and women can learn quickly.
Reasons for low representation
One possible reason for their low representation could be that IT is considered a “man's world.” Indeed, only around 16% of the almost 1 million ICT specialists in Bangladesh are women, according to a newspaper report published in 2019. In fact, the number of women graduating from ICT studies has decreased over the last decade, whereas the demand for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professionals is expected to grow by 8% between 2013 and 2025.
Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the workplace is necessary to achieve gender equality as well as full, productive, and decent work for all under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals.
To align with the goals, the Bangladesh government aspires to materialize the dream of “Digital Bangladesh.” This can be achieved by engaging more women in the ICT sector and enabling them to participate in the economy actively.
The Women’s Skills Development for Freelancing Marketplace (WSDFM) project provided free training to 1,000 underprivileged women, with an aim to develop them as freelancers. Researchers from the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) evaluated the impact of this training.
The research found that while freelancing acted as an enabling factor allowing women to work remotely so that they could manage household responsibilities and earn simultaneously, it naturally had some challenges, too.
The challenges
In Bangladesh, a woman is responsible for a significant share of household chores and must adopt diverse strategies to balance work and family roles. Compared to men, they spend around two and a half times more hours on unpaid care and household work.
This hampers their role as freelancers because freelancing calls for prompt communication with clients and replying to their queries, routinely maintaining online profiles and portfolios, and requiring them to be online for a significant time throughout the day. Time-pressed and burdened with responsibilities, particularly the freelancer mothers and wives juggle between their professional and personal lives.
Even when a woman balances her personal and professional life as a freelancer, her income can sometimes negatively impact the conjugal relationship, which intertwines with her decision-making process, agency, and intra-household power dimension.
“My family gets a little annoyed when I stay too involved with freelancing. When I remain busy here, leaving other household chores, my husband and mother-in-law question why I am doing this and how much money I would make from it. They also say that doing these things does not bring much money, and it would be better to take care of the children instead,” said Hasina (pseudonym), a research participant currently freelancing in the local marketplaces.
A need to change mindsets
Often lukewarm or negative attitudes from family members, peers, and even instructors discourage female freelancers from their future endeavours. Deprecating statements, stereotyping, restrictive gender roles, and patriarchal norms all play an equally prominent role in driving women away from realizing their full potential.
Even when a woman overcomes all the challenges mentioned above, the circumstance is exacerbated when she is unfamiliar with ICT-related content and its applications.
According to a South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM) study, 96% of women in villages and 87% in cities in Bangladesh have never used a computer. And 87% of rural and 77% of urban women have never used the Internet.
BIGD’s other studies on the digital lives of men and women show a stark discrepancy between men and women in their access to digital technology and digital skills. Again, social norms, stereotypical gender roles, and predominant ideas -- “ICT is for men” -- have held women back from gaining much-needed digital skills.
Many women struggle to learn the advanced computer-related expertise required to freelance for skills like graphic design or web development because their basic foundation in IT skills is too weak. In this case, it is even more difficult for them to sustain themselves in freelancing.
Also, without adequate exposure to the online world and prior knowledge of freelancing, prospective female freelancers may find it challenging to get a job and apply the skills learned in the workplace.
Women’s lack of exposure also affects their confidence. They have difficulty finding work as they do not know how to build a portfolio effectively and approach clients to convince them for employment. Even when they learn all about freelancing for the first time, they feel overwhelmed to apply the skills and techniques in the marketplace.
Possible solutions
So, how can we help women stay in the freelancing business so that they can be financially independent and secure?
The poet Maya Angelou wrote, “I sustain myself with the love of family.” BIGD research found that love and motivation from family members, peers, and instructors play a crucial role in encouraging women. Other household members’ attitudes of sharing chores and care responsibilities could also have a powerful role in encouraging women to enter and remain in this field.
Peer learning could be an alternative mechanism to flourish in freelancing. Women need extra support in learning because of their prior low exposure. Through peer learning, if a learner gets stuck in doing something, she may seek support from her husband, siblings, or other family members or peers.
Additionally, creating an enabling environment is essential for women to flourish; any remarks identified as sexist, stereotypical, and derogatory from family members, peers, instructors, or anyone with whom a woman has a social relationship should be discouraged, as these can demotivate women from pursuing freelancing in the future.
The initiatives taken in the past five years as an agenda for creating a digital Bangladesh were significant. However, those initiatives are not enough to include women in technology, and it is time that we reconsider the policies and cultural aspects of technology.
If culturally sustainable policies are not enforced, it can deepen existing gender issues. A coherent understanding of the needs of women and their families is required to develop policies for intervention.
Freelancing offers excellent potential for women’s employment. But it needs changing mindsets and proper, gender-sensitive training curriculum and learning methods.
Collected from Dhaka Tribune
