Approaches to Understanding the Position of Women Workers in the Informal Sector by Tamar Diana Wilson.

Approaches to Understanding the Position of Women Workers in the Informal Sector

by Tamar Diana Wilson

Background information

• Women especially vulnerable/exploitable

• Women who set up microenterprises disadvantaged – Lesser access to capital– Fewer buying/marketing skills– Fewer opportunities to establish

contacts

• Women often unpaid labor in husbands’ microenterprises

3 informal-sector occupations• Street vending• Garbage picking• Brick making

– Latter two: usually overlooked

Street vendors

• Contradictory government policies

• Not independent but linked with capitalist enterprises

• Columbia: 3 types– Commission sellers– Dependent workers– Independent self-employed

Commission sellers

• Linked to supplier• Sell products to public• Charge fixed price• Receive fixed commission on

each item sold• Examples: newspaper vendors,

ice cream or hot dog sellers, soft drink vendors

Dependent workers

• Same as commission sellers but do not receive fixed commission

Independent self-employed• Mostly sell uncooked or cooked

foodstuffs, secondhand goods, assorted small items

• Buy from variety of intermediaries or make own merchandise

Exploitation and control

• Bromley (1978): “Many street traders are little more than disenfranchised employees of larger enterprises. They work for relatively low and variable remunerations . . . and carry most of the risk in unstable and sometimes illegal activities.”

Exploitation and control

• Items smuggled from the U.S. and resold on the street

• Small profit per item– 1994: US$0.75-1.50 before taxes, stall

rental, other expenses

• “The sale of such items to people who generally cannot cross the border can only help the U.S.-based companies that produce them. Thus, the subsidy to capitalism is transnational.”

Exploitation and control

• Wholesalers hold virtual monopoly over the supply

• Cheat the vendors– Avoid government price controls by

charging vendors more and writing false receipts

– False scarcity of supply so vendors pay higher prices

– Sell fruit and vegetables by the case so vendors buy rotten fruit on the bottom

Exploitation and control

• Wholesalers often own the booth/refrigerator/cart the vendor uses

• Street vendors help national and transnational enterprises earn higher profits and, in essence, work for them, without the benefits provided to formal workers

• Dependent selling also among immigrants from Latin America in the U.S.

Gender and street vendors• Majority of all workers in informal

sector are women• Majority of all street vendors are

women• Mestizo women outnumber

indigenous ones among Mexico City street vendors

• Only vendors who sell foodstuffs are independent of sellers

Garbage pickers

• Sort through garbage and pick out paper, cardboard, and metals

• Sell to paper company or intermediary to recycle

• Cheaper for paper company to buy from garbage pickers than buying paper pulp

• Paid by the ton

Exploitation and control

• “Caciques” may demand that the pickers sell only to them, or that the pickers need a minimum amount of materials each day as an entrance fee

• Again, the pickers work for the paper company without benefits– Bromley: “disguised proletariat”

Gender and garbage picking• Most families who work in the

dump own their own truck– Allows them to sell directly to the

paper company• Women heads of household or

women who work in the dump while their husbands work elsewhere do not own their own truck– These women must sell to

intermediaries

Gender and garbage picking• Women often collect useful items

for their families– Clothing, damaged toys, diapers,

mattresses, kitchen utensils, etc.• Women often bring their

children who are too young to get a job to help them pick

• Women may collect clothing and then sell in the city

Exploitation and control

• One family: 3-4 days/week, 7-8 hours/day

• Earned about US$135/week– 3 times as much as two formal-

sector workers, 6 days/week, minimum wage

– No medical or pension benefits

Brick makers

• Subsidize urban capitalist enterprise by lowering cost of building materials through self-exploitation and exploitation of family labor

• This family labor force includes women and children

The process

• Mix clay with water and cow dung– Requires water to be carried in

buckets from nearby canals– Cow dung and sand must be screened– Clay carried in wheelbarrows

• Mold bricks and set to dry• File off rough edges• Bake bricks

– Fueled for 24 consecutive hours

Gender and brick making

• Women and children (boys and girls) take part in all labor, although they seldom drive trucks or mold bricks (until attaining a minimum skill level)

• Women’s work varies with the class position of the household

• Women may also provide meals for the brick makers (extension of domestic labor)

Gender and exploitation

Women’s work provides 3 types of subsidy– To the household– To the brick-making enterprise– To the capitalist enterprises located

in the formal sector of the economy

Subsidy to the household

• When women feed the brick makers, they are being exploited based on ideologies of gender and generational hierarchy

Subsidy to the brick making enterprise• As part of the family firm’s

unpaid labor force• Self-exploitation based on the

internalization of these ideologies

Subsidy to capitalist enterprise• The cheap bricks are then

consumed by the urban proletariat

Conclusions

• Disputes modernization theory: informal sector is part of a traditional sector divorced from the modern sector

• Disputes dependency theory: informal sector occupations are self-generated, no links to modern industry

• Disputes neoliberalism: informal sector workers will become capitalist entrepreneurs

Conclusions

• Neomarxist theory: – Unprotected, informal sector

subsidizes the formal sector and the capitalist system as a whole

– Workers are a multiply disguised proletariat

– Women are an integral part of this proletariat

Conclusions

• Women’s work in the informal sector amounts to double exploitation– Exploited both as disguised

proletarians and as a subordinated sex

• Their work is devalued– “Helping out” their husbands– Labor is extension of domestic duties

Conclusions

• Latin American gender ideology: shameful for men to allow their wives to work– Men’s inability to support their

households– Men’s inability to control their

wives

• Women’s labor contributions often consciously hidden