Digital Culture and the Reinforcement of Patriarchal Values Through the Promotion of Freelance Work

“Are you tired of the burden of employment?” “Do you want a break from work schedules and exhausting job requirements?” “Do you want to get rid of long working hours and work closer to your family?” “Do you want to earn an income online from home?” Many videos directed at women on social media rely on these kinds of phrases (some examples: here, here, here, and here). They fish in waters muddied by the capitalist exhaustion experienced by women, to a greater extent than men, as women carry the burden of reproductive labor in addition to productive labor.

Within the informal sector, women engage in various forms of work, much of which is home-based and relies on digital infrastructures for marketing and sales, such as producing and selling food products of all kinds, making accessories and beauty products, and purchasing clothing online for resale. In addition, there are forms of work that exist in and of themselves within digital spaces, such as content creation and the offering and selling of training courses.

Videos promoting empowerment and self-realization lessons are marketed as a magical solution for overcoming capitalism and global economic frustration. Promoting women’s work from home or online is not new. However, this promotion has recently become tied to self-development courses sold by women to other women, teaching them various skills under the claim that they enable women to generate profit or achieve self-fulfillment, while in practice contributing to the production of a standalone economy. The self-development economy has been estimated at 48.4 billion US dollars, with projections that it will grow to around 67.21 billion by 2030.

A pattern can be observed among some influencers that begins with announcing their rejection of salaried employment, describing it as an “illusion” or a “curse” that feminism brought upon women, and ends with the promotion of courses they offer and profit from. This content intersects with other forms of content that may appear different on the surface, such as tradwife content, but which carry the same underlying meaning: reinforcing the idea that women’s primary role is limited to domestic labor and childcare, while everything else remains secondary.

Multi-Level Marketing

The promotion of many of these courses follows the logic of pyramidal multi-level marketing and relies primarily on exploiting women’s marginalization from the formal labor market and the low wages they receive, while reinforcing the idea that working from home is the only option available to them.

Instead of the promoted product being tangible, such as cosmetics or clothing, as is common in multi-level marketing, the commodity here is digital, as clearly illustrated in this example, where women purchase a training course for around 400 US dollars and generate income by reselling it to other women.

Many critics have challenged the principle of Master Resell Rights (MRR), based on purchasing the rights to digital products and reselling them, describing it as an ineffective model that strongly resembles multi-level marketing and may, in some cases, take on a pyramid-like structure, given the extremely limited possibility of generating actual profit.

These marketing methods within digital contexts feed on the audience base provided by social media, represented by follower counts. High-level influencers are able to generate profits due to their large follower base, from which people may purchase the product in order to resell it. The lower an influencer is situated (within the hierarchy of fame), the more difficult resale becomes because of the absence of such an audience base.

At the top of the network stands an influencer-seller with digital visibility and a follower base that enables her to secure buyers for her courses, in addition to the false sense of trust she has built with her followers, making it easier to exploit their financial needs for profit. In the middle are sellers and customers, who purchase the product and may generate some profits through resale. At the lowest level are the most marginalized women, whose role is limited to being customers only, without the ability to generate any financial gain, while bearing the burden of purchasing the digital product.

Across the various levels of this marketing model, women are simultaneously sellers, customers, and even the commodity itself, each according to her position within the network, as profit is generated primarily through selling the product to new distributors.

Through multi-level marketing, women are pushed toward greater economic precarity by increasing labor pressure and domestic effort in exchange for financial costs borne from their own pockets, without generating actual profit. Although the declared goal is preserving their caregiving roles, these forms of labor provide none of the guarantees that would enable them to do so, such as stable income or social protections like paid leave and maternity leave.

A “Feminized” Version of the Manosphere

This economic model does not merely exploit women’s economic vulnerability, but fundamentally relies on convincing women that this is the appropriate option available to them because it does not conflict with their reproductive and caregiving roles. This content does not emerge in a vacuum, but rather grows within the same gendered system, feeding off dominant gender discourse by repackaging and reproducing it in a new form, thereby contributing to further exploitation and economic marginalization.

Alongside tradwife content, which overlaps with content promoting traditional gender roles, including content associated with “feminine and masculine energy,” the core message of these videos remains the same: that work and exhaustion outside the home are incompatible with women’s supposedly “delicate” nature.

While manosphere content, the online male supremacist sphere, openly expresses hostility toward women and explicitly calls for the acceptance of gender hierarchy, the content discussed here is promoted in a less overt manner, making it easier to absorb and accept. This content is presented by lifestyle influencers who do not present themselves as being concerned with politics, despite the fact that they circulate implicitly political content, making audiences more receptive to and influenced by it.

The empowerment of women and men thus becomes structured according to entrenched gender roles within society. In the manosphere, men are pushed toward “self-empowerment” through learning trading and investment in order to generate profit, while content directed at women encourages them to acquire skills that allow them to work from home in ways that do not conflict with caregiving roles.

This digital content repackages sexism and patriarchy by promoting them under the banner of women’s empowerment. While many people may reject discourse claiming that women are unequal to men or unfit for work, softer forms of discourse receive broader acceptance. These ideas are therefore reformulated under different slogans, such as the notion that men should occupy the role of breadwinner, or that demanding labor is incompatible with “feminine energy.”

In Conclusion

It is necessary to read this content within the context of the rise of fascist discourse and the rigid division of gender roles. Although much of this content does not explicitly promote patriarchy, it should nevertheless be understood as part of a broader ecosystem of gender-targeted content operating within both local and global political contexts.

Alongside the need to deconstruct this content, which pushes women toward further economic marginalization, the redistribution of gender roles becomes equally necessary. A fair redistribution of  care work within the household would restore a degree of temporal balance in women’s favor, enabling them to access formal labor markets without caregiving roles obstructing them.

As for workers in the informal economy, it is essential that they receive basic social protections, at minimum health insurance, paid parental leave, and paid sick leave. This would provide workers in the informal sector with more dignified and stable working conditions.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.