Debates about workers on digital platforms too often focus on male-dominated sectors such as deliveries and ride-hailing. Veronica Deutsch explains how care workers, overwhelmingly women, are now central to the precarious UK gig economy – and sets out what campaigners, researchers, employers and policy makers can do to support them.

My colleague Thalia Kidder is a feminist economist who’s been working for years to try and get the ‘care economy’ onto the development agenda. It’s been frustrating at times, but she should be celebrating right now: Oxfam’s bought in with projects that include developing a ‘rapid care analysis’ assessment tool; Melinda Gates decided to highlight Time Poverty in the Gates’