 1.The informal economy
2.Women in the informal
 economy
3.Globalization and the
informal economy
4.Home-based workers
5.Street vendors
6.Labour Laws
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Fact Sheets: Women in the Informal Economy
Women
are a vital part of the informal economy
- Large
numbers of women worldwide work in the informal sector - accounting
for ninety percent of women working outside of agriculture in
India and Indonesia, nearly three-quarters of women in Zambia,
four-fifths of those in Lima, Peru and more than two-thirds of
those in the Republic of Korea work in the informal sector
- The number of women and their
economic contributions to the sector are likely to be underestimated
because they engage in home-based work and street vending, activities
which are the most difficult to document
- Despite difficulties in collecting
statistics, women's share in informal sector production frequently
equals that of men and generally either matches or exceeds their
employment share
- Most women in the sector are self-employed
- Women's participation in the sector
varies across regions. In several African countries, almost all
women in the sector are self-employed or in family enterprises
while in Latin America and Asia about one-fifth of the women in
the sector are wage worker
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Gender, poverty and the informal economy
There is an overlap between working in the informal sector and being poor:
a higher percentage of people working in the informal sector, relative to
the formal sector, are poor. This overlap is even greater for women than
for men.
However, there is no simple relationship between working in the informal
sector and being poor or working in the formal sector and escaping poverty.
The relationship between informal employment and the intensity of poverty
appears only when informal workers are analyzed by sub-sectors of the
economy and type of employment (i.e., employer, self-employed, worker).
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Below is a summary
of the findings of two papers commissioned by the World Bank and
written by S.V. Sethuraman (Independent Consultant, ex-ILO) and
Jacques Charmes (Institute of Development Research and University
of Versailles, France), who reviewed the existing literature and
statistics, respectively, on the links between gender, poverty,
and the informal sector.
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Gender
and Incomes in the Informal Economy
- incomes
of both men and women are lower in the informal sector than in
the formal sector
- the
gender gap in income/wages appears higher in the informal sector
than in the formal sector and exists even when women are not wage
workers
- the
relatively large gender gap in income/wages in the informal sector
is largely due to two interrelated factors:
- informal incomes worldwide
tend to decline as one moves across the following types of
employment: employer - self-employed - casual wage worker
- sub-contract worker
- women worldwide are under-represented
in high income activities and over-represented in low income
activities (notably, sub-contract work)
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Gender
and Employment in the Informal Economy
- the majority of women in the informal sector are own account
traders and producers or casual and sub-contract workers; relatively
few are employers who hire paid workers
- men and women tend to be involved in different activities or
types of employment even within the same trades: for example,
in many countries, male traders tend to have larger scale operations
and to deal in non-food items while female traders tend to have
smaller scale operations and to deal in food items
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Gender
Discrimination and Segregation in the Informal Economy
- gender segregation in the informal sector means that women and
men are involved in different types of activities or different
employment statuses even within the same trades
- gender discrimination leads to gender gaps in education/skills,
access to credit/training/information, quality and location of
business premises, scale of business, time constraints, and other
constraints
- gender-based discrimination and segregation largely explain
why a) more women relative to men are in informal employment;
b) more men relative to women run micro-enterprises in the informal
sector; c) more women relative to men are sub-contract workers;
and d) income/wage differentials exist between women and men in
the informal sector
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Policy
Implications
- investment
in human capital can improve women's wages and increase women's
access to formal sector jobs but the effect of additional education
on the income and earnings of self-employed women in the informal
sector is not as clear
- removal
of gender-based discrimination and segregation in labour, capital,
factor, and product markets might have equal or greater effect
on the income or earnings of self-employed women in the informal
sector
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