Women In Informal Sector Research Articles

English

This study is set out to investigate poverty and women in the informal sector with evidences from urban areas of Eritrea. The study uses descriptive technique on primary data collected using interview and questionnaire from 12 towns distributed throughout the 6 administrative regions of the country. The approach adopted includes both a survey and structured interviews targeted at women who are active in the informal business sector. The main findings from the sample data of 1604 women collected indicate that majority of the respondents are poor as their monthly income hovers around the poverty line set by the world bank (of one dollar and fifteen cents per day). Furthermore, it has been noted that the greater part of women interviewed are active as petty traders, followed by services and only a minority of them are active in the manufacturing (production) sector. Poverty and unemployment are the two main driving forces that made them to try their chance by making themselves active in this sector. However, they lack the entire necessary infrastructure and amenities to facilitate their businesses as the majority of them work in open public places under continuous harassment and uncertainty. They do need legal and social protection, place of work, training, credit and other amenities if they are going to expand their business and go out poverty. The result shows the situation and plight of women in informal sector in the country and the paper therefore recommends that policy makers take notice of their situation and give more support and formulate policies that will provide an enabling environment for the growth, expansion and prosperity of the sector in general and women working in the sector in particular. Key words: Women, informal business, developing country, Eritrea.

Challenges Faced by Migrant Women in Informal Sector-A Review

Women are the most vulnerable sections of workers in the informal sector. The reasons of their vulnerability are low economic status, little or no access to institutional training, lack of skills due to lower level of literacy and lack of awareness. Women face multiple constraints while working in informal sector which compel them to live a life full of compromises. The present article discusses women in informal sector and their challenges. The article does not cover all the challenges that women face but focuses on those that are viewed as most critical.

Financial crisis and informal sector women entrepreneurs in Mauritius

This paper examines whether women entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector in the small island economy of Mauritius have been affected by the global financial crisis, an area which is largely under-researched due to data limitations. Survey data of 158 women entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector in Mauritius is used to assess the impact of the financial crisis on their business activities. The principal component analysis is applied and our findings reveal that women entrepreneurs have been affected by the global financial crisis in two ways. The first is that they have been affected through revenue factors, which comprise the following: a fall in demand, a drop in revenue and a decrease in profits. The second way in which women entrepreneurs in the informal sector have been affected is through cost factors associated with a rise in the price of raw materials and a rise in other costs of production.

South Africa as an information and knowledge society: benefit to the informal sector women entrepreneurs

The use of tools for development has evolved from the industrial revolution over time. The late 18th and 19th centuries saw the increased use of machines and developments in the mining industries; in the 20th century, there was increased use of information and technology; and major breakthroughs sparked the evolution of the information and knowledge society of the 21st century. The basis of the information and knowledge society revolves around technology's increased assimilation and diffusion in human society, particularly information and communication technologies and their rapid growth and use in the exchange of information and knowledge. This society offers many opportunities and benefits to people in terms of the facilitation of information creation, distribution, diffusion, access and use for growth and development in various spheres of life. In this paper we discuss the role of the information and knowledge society (IKS) for informal sector women entrepreneurs (ISWEs) and focus on what there is in the IKS that could benefit ISWEs, analyse the criteria, indicators and benefits of IKS and explore the challenges and opportunities of IKS. At the end of the paper we provide recommendations for the development of IKS for the benefit of rural women. The paper is informed by recent doctoral work on the role of the information and knowledge society in poverty alleviation and the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs in South Africa's informal sector. We find that by using criteria and indicators of an information and knowledge society to assess whether or not South Africa meets these requirements, South Africa indeed meets some of the criteria. However, it does not, in many instances, satisfy other criteria, and thus cannot be regarded unconditionally as an information and knowledge society. We recommend that South Africa should work toward achieving and meeting the criteria of the information and knowledge society by assessing itself against the criteria and indicators of such a society. Doing so would enable informal sector women entrepreneurs to reap the opportunities presented by the information and knowledge society.

An Urban-Spatial Analysis of the Women in the Informal Sectors of Greater Guwahati City of Assam, India

This article reflects the use of urban space by women in urban informal sectors in the city of Guwahati located in North East India. The population influx from across the borders in the aftermath of the partition has huge implications both on polity and on economy of the northeastern states in general and Assam in particular. Importantly, the urban informal sectors have a sizeable share in terms of its significant contributions towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as well as generation of employment opportunities largely. Using a feminist perspective, the research is an attempt to investigate the engagement of women in the informal sector in greater Guwahati. Research findings reveal that the occupations of the women workers are location-specific, that is, the manufacturing sectors (textiles, food preparation, printing and skilled service) are mainly home/shop based production (fixed locations) whereas the service sectors (leisure, caring, elementary construction, elementary sales and cleaning occupation) operate at variable locations (construction sites, street pavements, marketplaces and other various locations). Further analysis shows that the informal sector is highly demand dependent and such demands are in the central business areas of the city, therefore informal sector services (skilled services and elementary services) are found to be located in and around the central areas of Guwahati city. Women operators in the informal sector are attracted to the central business district because of the many advantages that it enjoys relative to other parts of a city. The paper concludes by calling on policy makers and physical planning agencies to evolve more pragmatic strategies for urban development matters in order that urban informal sector activities can be integrated into urban development plans. Finally, further research is called for on how urban planners could redesign the urban space with appropriate consideration of the informal sector operators.

Sustaining Informal Sector Women Entrepreneurs through Financial Literacy

The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals seek to address poverty among other things. It is assumed that addressing poverty issues through financial literacy will bring growth to a country’s economy. The informal sector is one avenue that has been observed to be contributing highly to the creation of employment opportunities, economic development and empowerment in South Africa, especially for women. However, the informal sector is heterogeneous which makes it difficult to quantify its profile, and due to the nature of its existence, informal sector entrepreneurs are often characterised by low levels of skills, limited access to organised markets, and low and unstable incomes. This is influenced by their lack of knowledge and skills in business management. It is believed that financial literacy can improve the performance of informal sector entrepreneurs and sustain business information and skills. By means of financial literacy, their basic life skills such as numeracy and literacy, communication skills and information searching skills will be improved which, in turn, will improve their confidence, generate good income and Millennium Development Goals 1−3 , namely that of poverty alleviation and equal education opportunities for women, though not all will be reached. The study uses focus group discussions, interviews and observations to explore financial literacy levels and their impact on informal sector women entrepreneurs (ISWEs) in South Africa. The purpose of this study is to determine their mathematical literacy, money management behaviour and skills, selection and utilisation of financial products, and access to and utilisation of information and advice. There were young, middle-aged and older ISWEs in the three focus groups. Participants had some limited skills such as personal, business operation and mathematical literacy. It was also interesting to determine the ISWEs’ realisation of their lack of awareness of business information services, and of their need for training interventions.

Strapping the Mexican Woman Immigrant: The Convergence of Reproduction and Production

Although more than half of the immigrants to the United States since the 1930s have been women (Houstoun, Kramer, and Barrett 1984), until the last two decades males were exceptionally predominant among Mexican immigrants (Donate 1993, Zahniser 2000), especially the undocumented. numbers are converging, however, for at least five reasons. First, on a transnational level, the once typical patterns of male recurrent migration, with multiple border crossings over a working career, has been replaced by a pattern of more permanent This is partially due to the dynamics of migration network maturation, involving the establishment of daughter communities abroad (e.g. Massey 1990, Massey et al. 1987), but also, and perhaps more importantly, because of tightening of the border through adding border patrol agents and utilizing military technology for detention purposes and efforts such as Operation Gatekeeper in California and Operation Hold-the-Line in Texas, have made the border crossing both psychically and economically more costly and highly dangerous (Dunn 1996, Massey et al. 2003, Nevins 2002, Zahniser 2000). mounting death toll along the border as the undocumented move toward the Arizona desert, where formal vigilance has been less, have lead to longer and longer time periods spent in the United States, and a greater tendency toward permanent or semi-permanent1 settlement (Massey et al. 2003). This more permanent settlement has led to a desire for family reunification, especially on the part of wives, who may migrate to join husbands even if not under husband's auspices, but rather that of kin or friends (HondagneuSotelo 1994, Mummert 1994). Second, on the U.S. national level, provisions of immigration legislation, such as that of the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act (IRCA) that provided amnesty to at least 2.3 million of the Mexican undocumented (Bean et al. 1989), had family reunification provisions paralleling other immigration legislation concerned with documented immigration. Thus women's (and children's) migration was facilitated (Cornelius 1989, 1991).2 Third, and on a more social-psychological level, is a changing family dynamic in Mexico which includes a stress on companionate marriage among women in their mid-thirties and younger (Hirsch 2000, 2003). As Hirsch (2003:150) explains: Young women...make migration and marital togetherness an explicit negotiation point during courtship. Before they marry they tell their boyfriends that if they are planning to go north they should save or borrow to pay the coyote for both of them, because no me voy a casarpara estarsola (I am not getting married to be alone). Hirsch (2003:150) concludes: The ideology of companionate marriage lends weight to women's desire to participate in the previously largely male adventure of migration. Among other contributing factors were the increasing involvement of women in formal sector waged manufacturing work and services since the initiation of the Border Industrialization Program in 1965 and with tourism development programs begun in the early 1970s, and spreading throughout Mexico, even into some rural areas (Arias 1994, Mummert 1994, Wilson, n.d.). More and more women on the Mexican side of the border thus had experience in waged-labor. Also, during the 1980s job openings in the lowskilled, low-waged sectors of the U.S. economy offered more jobs to women. Fourth, a higher proportion of Mexican women have entered and been driven into, the labor force because of periodic economic crises in Mexico since 1982 (Cornelius 1993:342; Gonzalez de la Rocha 1991, 2001; Roberts et al. 1999:241-243). Due to successive peso devaluations, high inflation, structural adjustment policies that cut urban and rural subsidies and privatized the economy, women and children were forced into income-generating activities in the informal sector and wage labor in the formal sector at unprecedented rates, in an attempt to maintain the value of the household wage. …

Structural Adjustment and the Working Poor in Zimbabwe: Studies on Labour, Women Informal Sector Workers and Health

Structural Adjustment and the Working Poor in Zimbabwe: Studies on Labour, Women Informal Sector Workers and Health