Entre o volante e a tela: apoio, solidariedade e dribles de grupos digitais de mulheres motoristas de aplicativo em Uberlândia

Abstract

This study investigates two digital groups formed by women ride-hailing drivers in the city of Uberlândia, Brazil: As Motoras and Pitstop Penélopes. The research is grounded in the author's autoethnographic experience, having worked as a ride-hailing driver for more than six years. The study sought to identify the main themes, conflicts, and strategies shared by participants in each group in order to understand the specific forms of subordination and control shaping these women's work. The discussions examined issues related to working hours, earnings, discrimination, relationships with passengers and fellow drivers, as well as the drivers’ perceptions of work, gender, politics, and their labor relationship with Uber. This is a qualitative study based on the researcher’s autoethnography as a driver and netnography as a participant in both digital groups. The findings reveal the predominance of a form of restricted solidarity, strongly influenced by discourses of empowerment and entrepreneurship. They also highlight a tension between empowerment and precarization, in which women drivers experience a contradictory condition: they simultaneously encounter a degree of relative autonomy and structural subordination, developing everyday forms of resistance without fundamentally challenging the exploitative logic of platform-based labor.