During our course I've found myself reflecting on a long-held research interest of mine, gender and work. I decided to 'storm' the Wikipedia page on
Freelancer to include important, if depressing, details about freelance labor I've gathered in my own research.**
When I came across the Freelancer page initially, it was haphazardly done. The sections were incomplete, the content was way too positive, and to my dismay the page didn't even include any "flags" regarding these weaknesses. My contributions to it took me four+ (!!) hours to do and they are no where near the comprehensive overhaul the page could use. I could write a dissertation on freelance work (maybe I will!). Much of what I added was drawn from research I'd conducted in the past on freelance writers.
I'm pasting my interventions below. In summary, I added the "Demographics" and "Freelance Practices and Compensation" sections. I heavily edited the "Benefits" and "Drawbacks" sections, and moved them around. Since material was already in these sections, which I edited, be aware that not all the writing is mine. But aside from the infographic (which I have problems with, but didn't replace at this time), all the citations are mine. I drew from research reports conducted by freelance associations, newspaper articles, blog commentary, and scholarship on gender, media, freelancing and working from home by feminist scholars such as Melissa Gregg (UCI) and others contributing to the journal Feminist Media Studies. What's left to do? Lots. The legal section could use some additions and clarifications -- particularly around 'work for hire' -- as could the section on 'impact of the internet." I'm saving these interventions for rainy day.
**In earlier entry I said I was going to write a page for Tizianna Terranova. This is still on my radar and a beginning for her page is still in my Sandbox. However, I decided to intervene in this existing page, Freelancer, for this project mostly because I found the page wanting for detail and I know and have collected details which I thought would greatly improve the page. I decided my time would be best spent contributing to an existing topical page rather than starting from scratch, though Tizianna Terranova's page certainly should get made, in good time, another rainy day project.
//MSJ
Freelance practices and compensation [edit]
What sort of work do freelancers do? While freelancers span a range of industries, many are engaged in media industries. According to the 2012 Freelance Industry Report compiled primarily about North America freelancing, nearly half of freelancers do writing work, with 18% of freelancers listing writing as a skill, 10% as editor/copyeditors, and 10% as copywriters. Twenty percent of freelancers listed their primary skills as design. Next on the list were translator (8%), web developer (4.5%), and marketing professional (4%).
[1]Elance, a web platform that connects freelancers with contractors, surveyed its members and 39% listed writing and editing are their main skill set.
[2]
Depending on the industry, freelance work practices vary and have changed over time. In some industries such as consulting, freelancers may require clients to sign written
contracts. While in journalism or writing, freelancers may work for free or do work "on spec" to build their reputations or a relationship with a publication.
[3] Some freelancers may provide written estimates of work and request deposits from clients.
Payment for freelance work also depends on industry, skills, and experience. Freelancers may charge by the day, hour, a piece rate, or on a per-project basis. Instead of a flat rate or fee, some freelancers have adopted a
value-based pricing method based on the perceived value of the results to the client. By custom, payment arrangements may be upfront, percentage upfront, or upon completion. For more complex projects, a contract may set a payment schedule based on milestones or outcomes. One of the drawbacks of freelancing is that there is no guarantee payment, and the work can be highly
precarious.
In writing and other artistic fields, "freelance" and its derivative terms are often reserved for workers who create works on their own initiative and then seek a publisher. They typically retain the copyright to their works and sell the rights to publishers in time-limited contracts. People who create intellectual property under a
work for hire situation (according to the publishers' or other customers' specifications) are sometimes referred to as "independent contractors" or other similar terms. Creators give up their rights to their works in a "works made for hire" situation, a category of intellectual property defined in U.S. copyright law — Section 101, Copyright Act of 1976 (17 USC §101). The protection of the intellectual property rights that give the creator of the work are considered to have been sold in toto in a work for hire agreement. A "work for hire" arrangement is similar to the control that employers have over the creations of employees, however in a contractual rather than employment relationship.
[4]
Demographics [edit]
According to the most recent report on independent contractors published by the
U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 10.3 million US workers (7.4% of the workforce) independent contractors in 2005.
[5] This number has grown since, though estimates vary. For instance, Jeffrey Eisenach, an economist at George Mason University, estimated in 2011 the number of freelancers had grown by one million since 2005.
[6] While in 2012, the
Aberdeen Group, a private research company, estimated that 26% (approx. 81 million) of the United States population was is a part of the
contingent workforce, a category of casual labor that includes freelancing.
[7] In 2013, the
Freelancers Union estimated that 1 in 3 workers in the United States are self-employed (approx. 42 million), with more than four million (43 percent) of those self-employed workers members of the
creative class, a strata of work associated with freelance industries, such as knowledge workers, technologists, professional writers, artists, entertainers, and media workers.
[8]
Freelancing is a gendered form of work.
[9] The 2012 Freelance Industry Report estimates that more than 71% of freelancers are women between the ages of 30-50. Surveys of other specific areas of freelancing have similar trends. Demographic research on
Amazon Mechanical Turk reveals that the majority of North American Mechanical Turk crowd workers are women
[10] Catherine McKercher's research on journalism as a profession has showcased that while media organizations are still male dominated, the reverse is true for freelance journalists and editors, whose ranks are mainly women.
[11]
Benefits [edit]
Freelancers do not have one singular reason for freelancing. According to the 2012 Freelance Industry Report, men and women respondents freelance for different reasons. Female survey respondents indicated that they prefer the scheduling freedom and flexibility that freelancing offers, while male survey respondents indicated they freelance to follow or pursue personal passions.
[12] Freelancing is also taken up by workers who have been laid-off, who cannot find full-time employment,
[13] or for those industries such as journalism which are relying increasingly on contingent labor rather than full-time staff.
[14] In interviews and on blogs about freelancing, freelancers list choice and flexibility as a benefit. One interviewee says he likes how the flexible hours let him take his sick mother to the doctor and give him time to see his children. As for the work, he said "I can turn down projects" that bore him.
[15]
Sometimes a freelancer will work with one or more other freelancers and/or vendors to form a "virtual agency" to serve a particular client's needs for short-term and permanent project work.
[citation needed] This versatile agency model can help a freelancer land jobs that require targeted, specific experience and skills outside the scope of one individual. As the clients change, so too may the players chosen for a virtual agency's talent base. This is a common way for freelancers to get work if the non-competing freelancer in the relationship reciprocates the relevant type of work back assuming that both are in the same industry.
[citation needed]
Drawbacks [edit]
Traditional Freelance Work System
Freelancing, like other forms of
causal labor, can be
precarious work. Websites, books, portals and organizations for freelancers often feature advice on getting and keeping a steady work stream.
[16] In addition to the lack of job security, many freelancers also report the ongoing hassle of dealing with employers who don't pay on time and the possibility of long periods without work. Additionally, freelancers do not receive employment benefits such as a
pension,
sick leave, paid holidays, bonuses or
health insurance, which can be a serious hardship for freelancers residing in countries such as the US without
universal health care.
[17]
Freelancers often earn less than their employed counterparts. While most freelancers have at least ten years of experience prior to working independently,
[18] experienced freelancers do not always earn an income equal to that of full-time employment. For instance, according to research conducted in 2005 by the Professional Writers Association of Canada on Canadian journalists and editors, there is a wage gap between staff and freelance journalists. While the typical Canadian full-time freelancer is female, between 35-55, holding a college diploma and often a graduate degree, she typically earns about $29,999 Canadian dollars before taxes. Meanwhile a staff journalist of similar age and experience level working full-time at outlets such as the
Ottawa Citizen or
Montreal Gazette newspapers, would earned at least $63,500 Canadian dollars that year, the top scale rate negotiated by the union,
The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America.
[19] Given the gendered stratification of journalism, with more women working as freelancers than men, this disparity in income can be interpreted as a form of
gender pay gap. The
Professional Writers Association of Canada report showed no significant difference between the earnings of male and female freelancers, though part-time freelancers generally earned less than full-time freelancers.
[20]
Working from home is often cited as an attractive feature of freelancing, yet research suggests working from home introduces new sets of constraints for the process of doing work, particularly for married women with families, who continue to bear the brunt of household chores and child care despite increases in their paid work time.
[21] [22] Melissa Gregg's three-year ethnographic fieldwork work in Australia on information industry workers raises concerns over how both physical isolation and continuous access enabled with networked digital media puts pressure on workers to demonstrate their commitments through continual responses by email and to conceal their family or home life.
[23]
