Women are the majority among small merchants who use e-commerce platforms in Brazil, representing 51.8% of this group in 2025, against 48.2% of men. Among merchants who do not use digital platforms, however, the situation reverses: women were 49.6% and men, 50.4%.
In total, about 5 million Brazilians worked as self-employed or were employers in the commerce sector, but only 210 thousand people, equivalent to 4.2% of this total, used digital platforms to sell their products. The breakdown considers employers and self-employed workers whose main activity was commerce, excluding vehicles and motorcycles.
The data are part of the third edition of a survey on work through digital platforms, which was released by IBGE this Friday. The survey was conducted in partnership with the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Labor Prosecutor's Office, allowing a profile to be drawn of who uses applications and platforms to earn income in the country.
