(Re)conceptualising precarity: a Global South feminist perspective on women gig workers’ experiences in Egypt

This commentary draws on a Global South feminist political economy approach to (re)conceptualise precarity, centring the lived experiences and knowledges of informal and invisibilised workers. Based on six months of fieldwork with 25 home-based women food vendors in Cairo’s gig economy (October 2022–March 2023), this article examines how women gig workers in Egypt’s food tech sector use their socially reproductive knowledges and relationalities to (re)define and navigate precarity in their daily work and life activities. Socially reproductive knowledges include intergenerational, experiential and reciprocal forms of knowledge embedded in everyday practices, while socially reproductive relationalities include the fluid and interconnected networks nurtured through care and household labour. The strategies women gig workers employed included financial stability grounded in spiritual faith ( rizq ), resourcefulness through cost-saving and sustainable provisioning ( tawfeer ) and the pursuit of purpose and self-actualisation ( kayan ). These strategies not only resist dominant economic frameworks but demand a rethinking of precarity itself, not as an aberration from stable labour, but as a generative space where alternative economies and solidarities are formed. Precarity is (re)conceptualised as fluid and relational, encompassing both material barriers, such as limited access to finances and tools, and non-material dimensions, including the pursuit of freedom, fulfilment and emotional security. This commentary is in conversation with round-table discussions on the global politics of insecure work and calls for policy interventions that prioritise stabilising local markets, supporting informal networks and investing in social infrastructures identified by workers themselves, including access to raw materials, childcare and protection of home-based enterprises.