Women in the informal economy: Precarious labour in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: High levels of unemployment, widespread poverty and growing inequality in South Africa have led to an emphasis on employment as a solution to these problems. In the current post-apartheid era, various scholars have documented a growing flexibility within South Africa's labour market, which they suggest indicates a breakdown of traditional, formal full-time employment contracts as well as a growth of precarious, marginal and atypical employment. Furthermore, the feminisation of labour, which has placed emphasis on women's movement into the labour market in South Africa, has concealed important continuities in the contemporary labour market pulling women with low skills into the informal economy out of financial and social need, further deepening divisions marked by race and class. As a result of the post-apartheid labour landscape, increasing numbers of women are setting up informal enterprises and entering informal employment arrangements. The labour of women in the informal sector is significant and it is important that its value is acknowledged. A study that highlights how women in the informal economy are economically and socially positioned sheds light on the lack of equality for women in the South African economy.In light of the above, this research is directed toward understanding the relationship between labour market trends and women's presence in the informal economy, particularly jobless growth, labour market flexibility, and the feminisation of labour. In addition, the research contextualises women's rapid entry into poorly paid and precarious work, or self-employment, illustrating the failure of labour legislation mechanisms to promote gender equality post-1994. It also explores how post-apartheid labour market trends contribute to women's presence in the informal economy and the extent to which women's care responsibilities are protected by labour legislation mechanisms that aim to promote gender equality. To understand women's experience and perceptions in the informal economy, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 women engaged in various types of informal employment in the Cape Town Metropolitan area.The findings of the research reveal that labour market trends have imposed a gendered precariousness on the lives of women in the informal economy in South Africa. This puts a burden on their productive and reproductive roles. The women in the study were typically primary contributors of entire households, reconciling care burdens with limited incomes - due to the commodification of goods and services and limited possibilities for upward mobility - excluded them from more long-term socio-economic emancipation. Furthermore, the research shows that women's over-reliance on a single livelihood strategy and the absence of family and neighbourly networks in times of economic difficulty contribute to constraining their capacity to deal with economic risk.To navigate these challenges, this paper calls for a greater reach of gender equal labour legislation to protect women in the informal economy. Particularly, labour legislation should acknowledge gender segmentation in the labour market and women's involvement in unpaid child and domestic care responsibilities as a source of vulnerability for women in the informal economy.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University