Gender
Women tend to make up the greatest portion of the informal sector, often ending up in the most erratic and corrupt segments of the sector. Sixty percent of female workers in developing countries are employed by the informal sector. The reasoning behind why women make up majority of the informal sector is two-fold. Firstly, it could be attributed to the fact that employment in the informal sector is the source of employment that is most readily available to women. Secondly, a vast majority of women are employed from their homes (most likely due to the large number of women who are involved in care work) or are street vendors, which both are classified in the informal sector Furthermore, men tend to be overrepresented in the top segment of the sector and women overpopulate the bottom segment. For example, very few women are employers who hire others and more women are likely to be involved in smaller scale operations. Labor markets, household decisions, and states all propagate this gender inequality. The gender gap in terms of wage is even higher in the informal sector than the formal sector
Read more about this topic: Informal Sector
Famous quotes containing the word gender:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)