Mumpreneurialism: a gig economy side-hustle fantasy

A day job that puts food on the table is now not enough. Women are being encouraged to pursue energising, passionate work after hours. Women’s increased insecurity, exhaustion, precarity, and anxiety are entirely absent from the equation. Shani Orgad writes that encouraging women to embrace the gig economy has its origins in the rise of Thatcherism and Reaganism, which promoted a shift away from traditional “jobs for life”. Women were cast as the perfect beneficiaries of this shift, especially in the context of the dismantling of social welfare and the state’s ongoing withdrawal of public support for childcare provision. The figure of the “mumpreneur” was born.