Exploring professional passenger driving and the gig economy through feminist theories of labor

Are taxi drivers in today’s era of the ride-hail app performing care work akin to domestic and household labor? So argue the authors of Spent behind the Wheel. Bringing together sociological and legal perspectives with feminist theoretical insights, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray examine the case study of contemporary professional passenger driving in the United States. On the one hand, they show, the rise of the gig economy has brought new attention to the industry of professional passenger driving. On the other hand, the vulnerabilities that professional drivers experience remain hidden. 

Drawing on interviews with drivers, labor organizers, and members of licensing commissions, as well as case law and other published resources, Hua and Ray argue that working for ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft shares similarities with driving for taxi companies in the impact on driver lives. Lyft and Uber sell the idea of industry disruption, but in fact they entrench long-standing modes of extracting the reproductive labor of their drivers for the benefit of consumer lives. Reproductive labor—conventionally understood as feminized labor—is extracted, but masked, behind the masculinized, racialized bodies of drivers. Professional driving is thus best understood alongside domestic and other gendered service work as reproductive labors devalued and often demonetized to benefit the national economy. 

Spent behind the Wheel is a must for readers interested in critical studies of technological change and the gig economy, showing how drivers’ capacities are drained for the benefit of riders, corporations, and the maintenance of the racial state. 

Julietta Hua is professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University. She is author of Trafficking Women’s Human Rights (Minnesota, 2011). 

Kasturi Ray is associate professor and chair of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University. 

"Spent Behind the Wheel exposes the harms of professional driving, illuminating the ways that capital accumulation sucks the vitality of reproductive laborers—those who make the world work for others but at the expense of their own health and well-being, men as well as women. With the increasing dominance of Uber and Lyft, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray’s intersectional feminist critique of the gig economy is both timely and potent."—Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019

"Spent Behind the Wheel is an outstanding work that bridges the studies of flexible and algorithm-dominated labor organizations with studies of feminist and racial theories and topics."—H-Net Reviews

"Spent Behind the Wheel is an outstanding work that bridges the studies of flexible and algorithm-dominated labor organizations with studies of feminist and racial theories and topics."—H-Net Reviews

"Spent Behind the Wheel’s application of feminist theory to ride-hailing is forward-thinking and valuable."—Journal of American Planning Association

"Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray’s critical analysis of drivers’ reproductive labour is certainly timely and highly valuable."—Le Travail