Published in October 2021

The book “Cracking the future of work. Automation and labor platforms in the Global South“ is the result of the collaboration of many. More than twenty five experts from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East & North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa transformed their valuable findings into the chapters of this book with heterogeneous perspectives. 

Developing countries face specific challenges that the standard literature has not yet managed to include as part of a truly global view on how technology and labor markets interact. This book aims to enrich the future of work debates with evidence from the Global South. This, in turn, is key for a policy agenda that needs context-specific and data-driven frameworks to promote the creation of high-quality jobs in developing countries amid the fourth industrial revolution.  

The book covers two important topics analyzing two trends that have started to permeate the Global South:

1. Automation

The first section of the book deals with the automation hypothesis. It has two chapters: “New technologies and the future of jobs in Latin America” by Irene Brambilla, Andrés César, Guillermo Falcone, Leonardo Gasparini, and “Inequality at risk of automation? Gender Differences in Routine Tasks Intensity in Developing Country Labor Markets” by Janneke Pieters, Ana Kujundzic, Rulof Burger, and Joel Gondwe. In both of them, the authors challenge the standard methodological assumption that like occupations are performed equally in different countries, regardless of their development stage and specific characteristics. This section brings fresh perspectives on relevant debates in the literature, such as the “hollowing out” phenomenon and whether the Global South is experiencing changes in employment patterns similar to those seen in the Global North due to technological change.

2. Labor platforms

The second section of the book is dedicated to labor platforms and analyzes how the diffusion of these new forms of work impacts workers in developing countries. It has three chapters: “Future of Work in the Global South: Digital Labor, New Opportunities and Challenges” by Diego Aguilar, Joaquín Gonzalez, Aileen Agüero García, and Roxana Barrantes; “Fairwork in the Platform Economy: A Global South Perspective” by Pitso Tsibolane, Maria Belen Albornoz, Arturo Arriagada, Treviliana Eka Putri, Jean-Paul Van Belle, Henry Chavez, Richard Heeks, Kelle Howson, Macarena Bonhomme, Jorge Leyton, Francisco Ibáñez, Louise Bezuidenhout, Mark Graham; and “Online Work and Women in India: The Opportunities and Limits of Digital Entrepreneurship” by Urvashi Aneja. As in the case of automation, these chapters provide new evidence to rethink the relationship between technology and jobs when considering Global South contexts.

Gender differences are analyzed cross-thematically across the book, showing how women tend to be worse prepared to face these trends. As the research agenda is still under construction, these pieces of research can be understood as raw material to kick-start a discussion that should continue to grow.

The developing country perspective is a constant throughout the book, and we hope it will contribute towards more inclusive, evidence-based, and truly global narratives on the future of work.

Published in June, 2021

This article is part of the Global Solutions Journal 2021 Summit Edition, published on the occasion of the Italian G20 Presidency 2021 and the Global Solutions Summit 2021.

Estimates show that more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas and more than 70% will do within 30 years, with a projection of more than 90% for less developed regions (UN, 2018). Currently approximately 1 billion people live in informal settlements (UN, 2016) on land highly exposed to the effects of climate change. This is in part due to a lack of infrastructure to prevent floods and landslides, and to mitigate the impact of heavy storms and heat waves.

According to the WHO and UN Habitat, green public spaces are neither sufficient nor equitably distributed in cities. Informal settlements and rapidly urbanized areas tend to fail to provide the amount of green public space needed.

Public spaces and green infrastructure have the potential to enhance the quality of urban life and produce substantial benefits for urban dwellers from environmental, social and economic standpoints (Mell, 2019). They are increasingly relevant in the fight against climate change and its impacts.

In this context, quality public spaces and green infrastructure elements should form an essential part of smart policies for building urban resilience in underserved urban settlements. The built environment needs not only to be resilient, but to build resilience, and green public spaces are a great way to accomplish such an endeavour, since they reduce temperatures via evapotranspiration, provide cool shade, sequester CO2 and retain storm water, among other benefits.

City governments in the Global South are working to improve informal settlements. However, upgrading programs rarely integrate climate resilience initiatives, even when there is much overlap between their goals in vulnerable urban contexts. The current investment in urban integration is an opportunity to include urban greening in the political agenda.

About the Global Solutions Initiative

The Global Solutions Initiative (GSI) is a global collaborative enterprise to envision, propose and evaluate policy responses to major global problems addressed by the G20, through ongoing exchange and dialogue with the Think 20 engagement group. The GSI is a stepping stone to the T20 and G20 Summits and supports various other G20 groups. The policy recommendations and strategic visions are generated through a disciplined research program by leading research organizations, elaborated in policy dialogues between researchers, policymakers, business leaders and civil society representatives.

Associated articles

Digitalization as a common good. Contribution to an inclusive recovery.

Gender mainstreaming in the COVID-19 response. Fostering equality during the pandemic and beyond.

Published in June, 2021

The COVID-19 crisis brought to the forefront the prevalence of profound inequalities worldwide. In a context of intermittent lockdowns, economic crisis, and sanitary uncertainty, the pandemic is widening the gaps, as the most underprivileged populations register income declines and increased health and social risks.

Gender inequalities are no exception: while women already faced greater obstacles to their autonomy, the emergency exacerbated disparities. The pandemic worsened the gender-poverty gap amid job losses and weak social protection. In 2021, for every 100 men living in poverty, there will be 118 women in the same position. This gap is even larger for young women and some territories, such as SubSaharan Africa and South Asia. In contrast to previous crises, this time, women retreated more frequently from the labor market, which affected their access to resources and well-being.

Women are concentrated in sectors that are more threatened by the crisis, such as tourism, food services and domestic work, and they are overrepresented in the informal economy, where incomes decreased 60% during the first outbreak. Consequently, women face higher job loss rates than their male counterparts, with their employment being 19% more at risk. Moreover, the pandemic unveiled how crucial care work is to sustain life, but its recognition did not imply a more equitable distribution of these tasks. Because of the feminization of care, women are on the front line to contain the outbreak and maintain communities’ well-being. Inside the household, they became responsible for the increased unpaid care workload that followed lockdowns, remote working, and school closures. While 49% and 37% of women reported an increase in the time spent on cleaning and childcare, respectively, only 33% and 26% of men did.

This phenomenon implied a refamiliarisation of care that enforced time restrictions on women, affecting their economic autonomy, access to working and educational opportunities, and mental health. Additionally, stay-at-home policies implied higher risks of gender violence for girls and women, as suggested by the rise in domestic violence calls. Secondly, outside the household, women represent more than 70% of the workforce in healthcare and social services –considered essential during the pandemic, which increased their exposure to infection.

The differential impact of the crisis on women implies a strong deprivation of their rights and an obstacle towards achieving the 2030 Agenda. Therefore, gender must be considered a key variable in the policy response for recovery.

While the pandemic is responsible for increasing the gaps, it also presents an opportunity to promote new approaches to policy. The breakdown of previous patterns creates a sense of exception that is a fertile ground for structural changes that otherwise would be resisted, such as gender mainstreaming. Thus, crises can be windows of opportunity to unleash the transformative potential of these approaches in the long term. The pandemic’s socioeconomic consequences call for a comprehensive, intersectional and gender-sensitive policy response that is people-centred, addressing the current crisis, the recovery, and the aftermath.

About the Global Solutions Initiative

The Global Solutions Initiative (GSI) is a global collaborative enterprise to envision, propose and evaluate policy responses to major global problems addressed by the G20, through ongoing exchange and dialogue with the Think 20 engagement group. The GSI is a stepping stone to the T20 and G20 Summits and supports various other G20 groups. The policy recommendations and strategic visions are generated through a disciplined research program by leading research organizations, elaborated in policy dialogues between researchers, policymakers, business leaders and civil society representatives.

Associated articles

Digitalization as a common good. Contribution to an inclusive recovery.

Urban greening. The case for ecological realignment in informal neighborhoods.

Published in June, 2021

This article is part of the Global Solutions Journal 2021 Summit Edition, published on the occasion of the Italian G20 Presidency 2021 and the Global Solutions Summit 2021.

The outbreak of COVID-19, and the way it has been confronted, has not only accelerated the digitalizaton of large parts of societies and economies and the process of transformation into digital societies, but has also highlighted that connectivity and other essential digital services are crosscutting technologies that have become common goods (which could also be described as public or collective). Connectivity, which most of the time is provided by private companies, should be global and therefore produced in sufficient amount and at the right price.

It is a phenomenon comparable to that of electricity or running water and sewage, as well as cable telephony, which were once luxury services for the few, and are now necessary for all. Even more so in this case, as digitalizaton affects the very meaning of modern democracy in our societies, as far as inclusiveness is regarded. A lack of internet access with sufficient capacity to cope with new needs and the demands imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic leads to people being cut off from society, education and the economy. Digitalizaton and connectivity are an integral part of the plans and policies for economic, social and health recovery from the current crisis.

Already, digital wireless connectivity has allowed entire territories to save huge investments in telephone networks, and 5G can be another leap in this direction. But while 93% of the world’s population lives in areas that are within the physical radius of coverage of broadband services for mobile devices or the internet, only 53.6% of the world’s population currently uses the internet, meaning that 4.1 billion people are deprived of access. The least developed countries, where only 19% of the population has access to the internet, are the least connected, reinforcing digital gaps within and between regions.

The pandemic has accelerated the urgency of a new social contract for this era at national, regional and global levels, and such a pact clearly requires a digital dimension. The Spanish government,2 for example, proposes that by 2025, 100 megabits per second should be achieved for 100% of the population. A company like Telefónica, for its part, proposes a “Digital Deal to build back better our societies and economies” to achieve a “fair and inclusive digital transition,” both for Spain3 and Latin America.

The pandemic and the way of coping with and overcoming it has also emphasized and aggravated the significance of different types of digital and connectivity gaps and divides, between countries and regions of the world, between rural and urban areas, between social groups, including income and gender-related gaps, and between companies (large and small), which need to be addressed and bridged in these new social digital contracts. For the combination of digital divides and the pandemic amplify social disparities and inequalities in various spheres of life. Digitalizaton can contribute to enlarge those divides, but also to overcome them.

About the Global Solutions Initiative

The Global Solutions Initiative (GSI) is a global collaborative enterprise to envision, propose and evaluate policy responses to major global problems addressed by the G20, through ongoing exchange and dialogue with the Think 20 engagement group. The GSI is a stepping stone to the T20 and G20 Summits and supports various other G20 groups. The policy recommendations and strategic visions are generated through a disciplined research program by leading research organizations, elaborated in policy dialogues between researchers, policymakers, business leaders and civil society representatives.

Associated articles

Urban greening. The case for ecological realignment in informal neighborhoods.

Gender mainstreaming in the COVID-19 response. Fostering equality during the pandemic and beyond.