India’s women gig workers organise with WhatsApp, secret meetings

Women working for Urban Company, Amazon protest platform practices and algorithms they say discriminate, deactivate accounts. — Photo by Rachit Tank on Unsplash

As women workers at India’s Urban Company, an app-based firm providing beauty and home care services, prepared for a nationwide protest against its new rules and account deactivations, they exchanged hundreds of messages on WhatsApp on every small detail of the days-long action.

Thousands of Urban Company's female employees, backed by the All India Gig Workers' Union, took to the streets in July in about half a dozen Indian cities to protest unfair response and rating requirements that led to their accounts being blocked.