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In most parts of the world women have challenges accessing employment with decent pay, safe working conditions and social protection.

While there is progress in terms of lifting the status of women, there is no region where men and women have equal access to productive resources, including land, information and financial resources. Even with the considerable increase in women’s education relative to men, women continue to have limited opportunities and earn less than men on the labour market.

Women continue to work long hours than men and their work is usually under-valued and unrecognised. Even in the home, they have extensive workloads and their work is getting harder and time consuming due to ecological degradation and other environmental factors. For example, the persistent drought means more walking distances to fetch water. As a result, informal employment is the norm for most women both in the rural and urban areas. In Sub-Saharan Africa and East and South-East Asia (excluding China) 75 percent of all jobs for women are informal.

Most women in the informal sector are self-employed as street vendors, airtime recharge card agents, petty traders on goods such as cell-phone chargers, music discs and vegetable vendors, hairdressers, tailors and some especially in the rural areas are subsistence farmers.

While not much is said about the contribution of the informal sector to the welfare and well-being of families and households, tremendous financial contribution has been made to the families through women’s participation in the informal sector. Women wake up as early as 4AM and some leave their places of work around 10PM. Some of these are widows and have contributed over the years to their children’s school fees and general welfare.

Globally, 63 percent of women are in the informal sector and some work without direct pay thereby limiting their autonomy and decision-making role within the household as well as their general empowerment.

In rural areas, most of the women in informal employment work as small-scale farmers where they prepare and till the land, cultivate the crop, spray pesticides, harvest and market produce. Some sell their produce to nearby markets as well as in towns and cities. In most instances, men become the employers of these women and they continue to remain in low wage jobs.

While this is the case, it means most women do not contribute to pension and hence there is no security when they retire or grow old rendering them poorer than men at old age.

Since the economic crisis, more and more women are in the informal employment. However, in most instances policy frameworks either overlook the constraints faced by these workers and at times the by-laws make it harder for them to make a decent living. Of course it is also necessary for those in the informal employment to abide by the by-laws set by urban planners.

Street vendors need basic infrastructure such as toilets. Women in particular are affected if there is no running water as they constantly need to change their sanitary ware when menstruating. Some with little babies might also need user friendly toilets so that they can change nappies during the day. In most cases some rarely wash their hands and continue to sell their wares to customers who are oblivious of the health hazards associated with lack of proper sanitary care. Research points out that in some countries, street vendors end up suffering from kidney ailments due to lack of toilets at places where they operate from.

Access to financial services including credit, loans and savings is vital for women in the informal sector but it is rarely available to them.

A survey of street vendors revealed that only 37 percent of women were able to use their own capital to start-up businesses while a majority borrowed from clubs, friends, relatives and older children.

Some vendors who were interviewed highlighted that they made very little profit on a day-to-day basis making it difficult to buy stock the following day. On the other hand, the small-scale farmers also need financial services to buy seed, fertilisers and to invest in equipment. As a result most of them just grow enough for household consumption and rarely have excess to sell.

Banks are unwilling to engage with small vendors due to risks induced in handling small amounts of money. Some vendors therefore rely on money lenders or borrowing. Some micro-financing institutions that have sprouted are there for profit and charge high interest rates.

This further increases the women’s vulnerability and push them further into debt. Some countries have even introduced community banks which have no collateral for women. The Women Development Fund run by the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development which benefits women through initiating viable projects is one example of such a facility which does not call for collateral. Training of women in Internal Savings and Lending by the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development has also assisted women in mobilising resources to start projects.

Increasing women’s opportunities for quality paid employment is the key to redressing their socio-economic disadvantage and to achieving substantive equality. The marginalisation of women in both the private and public sector ought to be addressed. The “glass ceiling effect” usually affects the women as they continue to remain in the lower strata of the ladder.

Elsewhere in the world, some banks like the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh developed highly effective credit facilities by taking their services to the village level especially to poor women. The bank encourages use of group guarantees and introduced decentralised and cost effective operations for lending to the poor. This also helps to bridge the gaps created by poverty, illiteracy, gender and remoteness.

There is need to introduce enterprise development services to assist micro-entrepreneurs including those in the informal sector. These are non-financial services and include business training, marketing and technology services and skills development including computer skills. Enterprise development services may or may not require subsidies but the trainees can actually pay for such services on their own.

It is unfortunate that most banks and micro-credit facilities do not cater for the specific dynamics of the credit needs of the poor due to inflexible lending terms, high default rate, high documentation, high procedural costs for the borrowers and lack of market orientation.

However, new strategies ought to be devised to ensure that those that are in informal employment and the poor also benefit.

About the writer: Vaidah Mashangwa is Bulawayo’s Provincial Development Officer in the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development. She can be contacted on cell: +263 77 211 1592 or email: vmashangwa@gmail,com