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

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

2. Occupations in the Informal Sector • Street Vending • Garbage Picking • Brick Making

3. 19th Century 20th Century Street Vendors Federal administrations supported street vendors because many paid taxes Street vendors required to buy permits to operate “Since the 19th century the general pattern has been that the local government sought the support of street vendors while the national government sought to eradicate them…” Marti (1990)

4. Street Vendors’ Contradictory Relationship with Government Vendors support capitalist enterprises by receiving their goods from retail suppliers and increase economic spending Governments try to portray an inter-national image of a progressive, modern economy that doesn’t include the street vendors vs. Co-Dependency? Marti (1990)

5. Columbian Street Vendors • Commission sellers • Dependent workers • Independent / • Self-Employed Both have dependent links with their suppliers. Business includes: newspaper vendors, ice cream and hotdog sellers, soft drink vendors, and sometimes illegal goods. Either make own merchandise or buy from intermediaries. Deal in uncooked/cooked food stuffs, second-hand goods, and assorted small items. Bromley (1978)

6. Commission vs. Dependent Workers The “category of ‘dependent workers’ covers those street traders who depend upon a supplier of a stall, or of credit to obtain merchandise, in order to be able to earn their living, but who do not have a fixed commission for each item sold” - Bromley, 1978: 1166 • Columbia’s four major soft-drink companies own around 600 permanent kiosks the dependent vendors work out of. • Wholesalers loan handcarts and sell produce on credit to various vendors.

7. Mexican Street Vendors In the 18th century, many street vendors of Mexico City were married indigenous women, and marginalized by their poverty and ethnicity. Today, mestizo women outnumber indigenous street vendors, and both are still marginalized by society. Since the Mexican street vendor is helping the capitalist companies by selling their goods, their service is integral in the success of these businesses While their work is essential for the companies to operate, their work is marginalized and street vendors receive lesser pay than the stores performing the same service in the formal sector

8. Manipulation in Peru • Wholesalers, usually ones that have a monopoly over their product, avoid the government price control, charge what they please, and write receipts for the correct price • To make these vendors pay these inflated costs, they create a false scarcity of the product • They sell produce by the case, turning more of a profit by forcing the vendor to buy any rotten produce that may be on the bottom Bromley (1978)

9. Exploitation of Street Vendors • Street traders work for low-wages and are disenfranchised versions of regular retailers. • Street vendors carry most of the risk in their dealing with sometimes illegal activity • Both the street vendors and grocery stores supply the same products manufactured by other capitalist enterprises. • Vendors help these enterprises earn higher profits, and essentially work for these companies (whereas the grocery store owner’s employment is recognized, the street trader’s is implied). • Unlike the grocery store owner, the street vendor does not get the same benefits as those working in the formal sector.

10. Escobar (1998)

11. In America… • Latin American immigrants also rely upon dependent selling to make money • Many work for a distributor and earn small daily wages, and sometimes a commission on their sales • Few vendors work on salary “…the path proceeds from cart employee to single-cart owner and, for the successful few, to multicart owner/manager who hires others to do the actual street selling.” -Margolis, 1994: 139

12. Occupations in the Informal Sector • Street Vending • Garbage Picking • Brick Making

13. Mexicali, Mexico • Only garbage pickers with their own trucks can sell directly to the paper companies • Those without trucks must sell to an intermediary, a cartonero, who works in the dump and buys what the pickers collect • In many cases, owners of the dump demand a certain amount of materials as an entrance fee • However, a professional family of 5 was able to work 25-30 hours a week and make $135, which was three times as much as two formal sector employees could earn working 40-hour weeks • In situations where women are the head of the household and rely on the income of garbage picking, they bring their children along to help earn extra money for the family

14. Profiteering of Paper Companies Professional garbage pickers target metals and cardboard intended for recycling as their main money-making goods. It is cheaper for the paper companies to buy the recycled cardboard than to buy the pulp from trees. If the garbage pickers did not sell the cardboard to these companies, the company would be forced to hire them as full-time workers, at least until the price of pulp dropped below the price of recycling. While corporations recognize their success depends on these garbage pickers, by keeping them in the informal sector of work the companies are enabled to make more profit.

15. Exploitation of Garbage Pickers • “Goods and services offered by these informal-sector firms are often cheaper than those offered by formal-sector enterprises because of the exploitation of family labor and of workers unprotected by minimum wage or overtime laws.” • Because there is access to these second and third-hand clothing goods, it lowers the financial pressure and dependency of these garbage pickers • This informal sector market protects the formal sector of production, and the formal sector relies upon the subordination and low-wage labor of the informal sectors • By subordinating the work to the informal sector, many of which are women, companies do not have to provide “social security benefits, such as medical care or pension plans, enjoyed by the formal proletariat.”

16. Occupations in the Informal Sector • Street Vending • Garbage Picking • Brick Making

17. Why Brick Making? Through unpaid family labor, brick-making families are capable of producing bricks cheaper than formal sector professions who sell their product at profit-making prices. These brick makers help the capitalist companies expand and develop by lowering the price of building materials. By exploiting themselves, and the work of their families, the allow the companies buying the bricks to exploit their labor

18. Subsidiary Labor of Brick Making • Mixing clay with water • Loading/Unloading clay • Molding the bricks* • Setting them up to dry • Smoothing rough edges • Baking the bricks • Rinsing molds • Feeding the workers “As various researchers have found for peasant women, brick makers’ wives’ work is invisible to census takers, to their husbands, and often to themselves…and the exploitation of family labor force enable lower wages to be paid to the urban proletariat that consumes them.” * Only done by women who have proven a minimum skill level

19. Women’s Work Provides Subsidy to the: • Household • Brick-making enterprise • Capitalist enterprises in the formal sector “Brick makers are thus functional to capitalism in the ways envisioned by the marxist and newomarxist paradigms.”

20. Conclusions The author feels the neomarxist approach is the best method to understanding the relationship between the formal and informal sector. This approach sees the informal workers as “subproletariats” whose work encouraged the success of capitalist businesses and capitalism as a whole. Women, being the majority of these informal sector jobs, are exposed to double exploitation as disguised proletariats and as a subordinated sex.

21. The Male Breadwinner “Gender ideology in Mexico makes it shameful for men to allow their wives to work, first because it calls into question men’s ability to support their household and second because it undermines men’s ability to control their wives’ movements.” -Mummert, 1992: 3 While women’s labor is in many cases essential to the family, both men and women try to hide their contribution because of the male breadwinner perception. However, women’s labor in the informal sector is essential to not only the family, but to society and even the capitalist corporations that oppress them.