Jonathan Donner

The Academic Fellows program has brought together 11 African academics based around the continent

and the diaspora to investigate Africa's narrative across a range of mediums and topics that include

social media, arts reinstitution, the impact of Covid-19, and spoken word poetry. The program brings

academic rigour and an evidence-based approach to African No Filter's work to understand and shift

harmful and stereotypical narratives about Africa. It forms part of a larger research agenda to

understand narrative and its impact. It is co-funded by Facebook and supported by The African Union,

AUDA-NEPAD and the New York-based Africa Centre.

Women’s economic empowerment is central to gender equality.

However, work opportunities available to low-income women in

patriarchal societies are infrequent. While crowd work has the

potential to increase labor participation of such women, much

remains unknown about their engagement with crowd work and

the resultant opportunities and tensions. To fll this gap, we critically

examined the adoption and use of a crowd work platform by low-

income women in India. Through a qualitative study, we found

that women faced tremendous challenges, for example, in seeking

permission from family members to do crowd work, lack of family

support and encouragement, and often working in unfavorable

environments where they had to hide their work lives. While crowd

work took a toll on their physical and emotional wellbeing, it also

led to increased confdence, agency, and autonomy. We discuss

ways to reduce frictions and tensions in participation of low-income

women on crowd work platforms.