Taking development for a ride: the World Bank’s research with ride-hailing companies

Abstract

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation has produced three research reports on gender equality and ride-hailing, in collaboration with ride-hailing companies. This article examines these reports in light of wider conversations about the growing corporate co-production of development knowledge. Focusing on research claims about the gender and development potential of ‘sharing economy’ firms like Uber, it argues that the shortage of women drivers has been successfully framed as a gender and development problem, rather than a labour supply problem to be resolved by ride-hailing companies themselves. Multi-stakeholder solutions are proposed, involving licensing actors, charities, government development agencies, banks, and insurance providers. Gender equality research contributes to a new development common sense involving expanding the numbers of indebted ‘independent contractors’ in the gig economy; reducing ‘regulatory burdens’ on platforms; and binding nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) ever tighter to corporate interests. This article shows the centrality of gender research to the Bank’s broader reorientation towards business-led development, and highlights some distinctive lessons of work on ride-hailing.

KEYWORDS:

• Ride-hailing
• gig economy
• gender
• World Bank

Acknowledgments

This article has benefited from several rounds of constructive critical feedback, including from participants at the 2022 civil society event on gender inequality and the gig economy held at the Bank-Fund meetings, and the 2023 Birmingham-McMaster research collaboration on international financial institutions and gender equality. I offer particular thanks to Doris Buss, Meghan Campbell, Judy Fudge, Emily Grabham, Gayathri Krishna, Rianne Mahon, Rachel Noble, Shirin Rai, Roos Saalbrink, editors at RIPE, and three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Wade later charted the internal arguments over the 2000 WDR on poverty. This gave blurred messages about growth, markets, and poverty reduction across different chapters (Wade, 2002, p. 229), and the summary included claims that are absent from the report itself (p. 242).

2 See also Seabrooke and Sending (2019) on how the Bank’s reliance on consultants discourages research independence, and Williams (2022) on how performance reviews and evaluations shape research.

3 The Washington Consensus was linked to the interests of large businesses and banks (Babb & Kentikelenis, 2021, p. 529). See also Berge and St. John (2021) on the IFC and Bank role in supporting domestic arbitration agreements that favour multinational corporations.

4 For reasons of space, I leave aside MIGA’s work on gender. However, in March 2022 MIGA awarded its 7^th annual gender leadership award to Head of Energy at Actis, a global investment firm (World Bank, 2022). Previous MIGA gender awards have gone to the Director General of an Emirates-owned mining development company; Head of Responsible Banking at Banco Santander Group; a Citigroup executive; and the Managing Director of an energy company that develops and operates power plants across Africa.

5 On the narrow, economistic forms of gender expertise legible to the Bank, see also, Bergeron (2006); Bedford (2009); Calkin (2018); Altan-Olcay (2020) and Nagels (2021). On the poor quality of the research underpinning Nike’s claims about gender empowerment via the Girl Effect initiative, see Moeller (2018).

6 E.g. see Moeller (2018) on how a Brazilian NGO involved in Nike’s Girl Effect programme mobilized its own gender expertise to ‘maneuver around’ the Nike Foundation (p. 173); and Prügl (2017) on how corporate gender equality interventions can provide openings for feminist agendas.

7 See also Meagher (2018) on Uber’s over-estimation of driver earnings in claims about its positive impacts in Nigeria.

8 The Cohen et al. research was also mentioned as evidence of Uber’s commitment to gender equality by Uber’s then Chief Operating Officer, in his foreword to the IFC-Uber report (2018, p. vi).

9 The reference is to a digital markets database held by a for-profit provider of market and consumer data.

10 This would result in a landmark judgement about Uber drivers having worker status; see Uber v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5.

11 Uber South Africa v National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (C449/17) [2018] ZALCCT 1.

12 While legal analysis of worker status is beyond the scope of this article, see e.g. Bertolini and Dukes (2021) and Adams-Prassl (2022).

13 E.g. the UK is ‘the most developed and most gender-equal of the countries studied for this report’ (IFC-Uber, 2018, p. 103) but Mexico has by far the highest proportion – 5.3% – of female drivers.

14 Mukund Dewangan v. Oriental Insurance Company Limited (2017) 14 SCC 663.

15 See additional discussion in IFC, 2020a, p. 19. High proportions of Uber drivers are indebted to intermediaries who own their cars in, e.g. South Africa (Pollio, 2019), and Nigeria (Meagher, 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Bedford

Kate Bedford is Professor of Law and Political Economy at the University of Birmingham. She has a long-standing interest in the interactions between law, gender equality, and development.