Informal Women Workers In The Global South

Formalising employment is a desirable policy goal, but how it is done matters greatly, especially for women workers. Indeed, formalisation policies that do not recognise gendered realities and prevailing socio-economic conditions may be less effective and even counterproductive. This book examines the varying trajectories of formalisation and their impact on women workers in five developing countries in Asia and Africa: India, Thailand, South Africa, Ghana and Morocco. They range from low- to middle-income countries, which are integrated into global financial and goods markets to differing degrees and have varying labour market and macroeconomic conditions. The case studies, using macro and survey data as well as in-depth analysis of particular sectors, provide interesting and sometimes surprising insights. Despite some limited successes in providing social protection benefits to some informal workers, most formalisation policies have not really improved the working conditions of women workers. In many cases, that is because the policies are gender-blind and insensitive to the specific needs of women workers. The impact of formalisation policies on women in developing countries is relatively under-researched. This book provides new evidence that will be applicable across a wide range of developing country contexts and will be of interest to policymakers, feminist economists and students of economics, labour, gender and development studies, public policy, politics and sociology.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline. Illustrating how current social contracts may be considered inadequate, irrelevant or unjust, Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South draws on the accounts of informal workers to advocate for radically new conceptualizations of state-society, capital-labour and state-capital-labour relations characterised by recognition, responsiveness and reciprocity.

Women as a group have often been divided by a number of intersecting inequalities: class, race, ethnicity, caste. As individuals - often isolated in reproductive or other home-based work - their weapons of resistance have tended to be restricted to the traditional weapons of the weak: hidden subversions and individualised struggles. Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy explores the emergence of an alternative repertoire among women working in the growing informal sectors of the global South: the weapons of organization and mobilization. This crucial book offers vibrant accounts of how women working as farm workers, sex workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, fisheries workers and migrant factory workers have organized for collective action. What gives these precarious workers the impetus and courage to take up these steps? What resources do they draw on in order to transcend their structurally disadvantaged position within the economy? And what continues to hamper their efforts to gain social recognition for themselves as women, as workers and as citizens? With first-hand accounts from authors closely involved in emerging organizations, this collection documents how women workers have come together to carve out new identities for themselves, define what matters to them, and develop collective strategies of resistance and struggle.

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics presents a comprehensive overview of the contributions of feminist economics to the discipline of economics and beyond. Each chapter situates the topic within the history of the field, reflects upon current debates, and looks forward to identify cutting-edge research. Consistent with feminist economics’ goal of strong objectivity, this Handbook compiles contributions from different traditions in feminist economics (including but not limited to Marxian political economy, institutionalist economics, ecological economics and neoclassical economics) and from different disciplines (such as economics, philosophy and political science). The Handbook delineates the social provisioning methodology and highlights its insights for the development of feminist economics. The contributors are a diverse mix of established and rising scholars of feminist economics from around the globe who skilfully frame the current state and future direction of feminist economic scholarship. This carefully crafted volume will be an essential resource for researchers and instructors of feminist economics.

This landmark volume brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate recent conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy as well as future challenges and directions for research and policy. Well over half of the global workforce and the vast majority of the workforce in developing countries work in the informal economy, and in countries around the world new forms of informal employment are emerging. Yet the informal workforce is not well understood, remains undervalued and is widely stigmatised. Contributors to the volume bridge a range of disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, development economics, law, political science, social policy, sociology, statistics, urban planning and design. The Informal Economy Revisited also focuses on specific groups of informal workers, including home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers, to provide a grounded insight into disciplinary debates. Ultimately, the book calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the Global South, as well as the informal practices of the state and capital, not just labour. The Informal Economy Revisited is the culmination of 20 years of pioneering work by WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global network of researchers, development practitioners and organisations of informal workers in 90 countries. Researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and advocates will all find this book an invaluable guide to the significance and complexities of the informal economy, and its role in today’s globalised economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429200724, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

The Global Informal Workforce is a fresh look at the informal economy around the world and its impact on the macroeconomy. The book covers interactions between the informal economy, labor and product markets, gender equality, fiscal institutions and outcomes, social protection, and financial inclusion. Informality is a widespread and persistent phenomenon that affects how fast economies can grow, develop, and provide decent economic opportunities for their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to uncover the vulnerabilities of the informal workforce.

This book utilizes the School to Work Transition Survey (SWTS) of the ILO to discuss what shapes an individual worker’s decision to participate in unionization and how her working condition is affected by that.. There remains a disconnect as far as our understanding of the relationship between the labour’s choice to unionize as individual actor and the broader socioeconomic, political and cultural context of that choice, is concerned.Using the SWTS data, the book focuses on the identification of the correlates of workers’ propensity to unionize, the outcomes of unionizing and their synthesis with the wider political economy context to arrive at stylized patterns in the way informal workers exercise their agency.The book also reflects upon field data on organizing challenges of migrant workers in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The book does not claim to establish any causality but is interested in bringing out broad patterns that define informal workers’ organizing in a particular context. In the process, the book ends up with the preposition that despite all the heterogeneities across regions, informal workers’ organizing today can be understood through the lens of pragmatism.

On the cover: New gender mainstreaming series on development issues