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Women in the informal sectorFiona Leach aa Education and Development, Institute of Education ,University of London , 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1HOAL, UK Phone: +44 (0171) 580 1122 Fax: +44 (0171)580 1122Published online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Fiona Leach (1996) Women in the informal sector, Development inPractice, 6:1, 25-36, DOI: 10.1080/0961452961000157584

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IntroductionContrary to the images projected worldwideof women fulfilling primarily domestic andchild-rearing roles, the reality of mostwomen’ s lives is that they are obliged bypoverty and deprivation to seek an incomeoutside the home, either as the sole bread-winner, or to supplement male earnings. Indeveloping countries, when women are notengaged solely in subsistence agriculture,they tend to be involved in the so-calledinformal sector (also known as the `hidden’or `shadow’ economy). In the poorestcountries, there is fierce competition for thebetter-paid and more secure jobs in the smalland under-developed formal or modern sector(which may account for as little as 10 percent of total employment), and women cannotusually compete for these with men.

Within the informal sector, women aregenerally found in low-income activity whichbarely guarantees survival. This is likely to be

in self-employment or in casual or seasonalpaid labour, often of an unskilled andphysically demanding nature, with low prod-uctivity, long hours, and little opportunity forupward mobility or for acquiring or improv-ing skills. Typical activities for women arepetty-trading and street vending (of vege-tables, poultry, processed food, or hand-crafts), paid domestic work, casual employ-ment in unregulated small enterprises, and onconstruction sites and agricultural schemes.Such work is rarely protected by labourlegislation, and its precarious nature makeswomen an easy prey for unscrupulousmoney-lenders and contractors. Often womenresort to illicit economic activity such asunauthorised street trading, brewing ofalcohol, and prostitution, which makes themeven more vulnerable to persecution andharassment. While some women do succeedin setting up profitable businesses, forexample in the fashion and service industries,

250961-4524/96/010025-12 � Oxfam UK and Ireland 1996

Women in the informal sectorThe contribution of education and training Fiona Leach

This article reviews the extent to which the educational system has acknowledged theimportance to women of the informal sector of the economy, and the extent to whichit has sought to prepare them for employment or self-employment within it. Itassesses the record of both formal and non-formal education in providing womenwith the necessary skills to compete with men for employment, and concludes thatboth have generally failed to assist women to obtain skilled, well-paid, and securejobs, leaving them in overwhelming numbers in subsistence-level activities in theinformal sector. Within the non-formal approach to education, the article examinestraining in income-generating projects, which are a major conduit for assistance topoor women in developing countries. Some recommendations for improved strategiesof education and training provision are presented.1

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Development in Practice Volume 6, Number 1, February 1996

and in certain kinds of trading, theseconstitute a tiny minority.

It is difficult to assess the exact extent ofwomen’s involvement in the informal sector,for much of their activity is invisible’ or isnot counted as `work’ . For example, in thoseparts of Asia where seclusion of women isencouraged and a man is expected to providefor his wife and family in full, a commonform of female economic activity is home-based piece-work for a local contractor (forexample in the garment industry), usually atexploitative rates of pay. Likewise, whenwomen are required to work as helpers in afamily unit Ð preparing yarn for weaving orfetching water and clay for making pots Ðtheir contribution is not recognised as `work’ .Women themselves tend to undervalue theireconomic activities.

As agricultural mechanisation and thecommercialisation of farming have deniedwomen access to land traditionally used forgrowing food, they have turned to theinformal sector for a source of income.Economic recession, structural adjustment,and the growing incidence of female-headedhouseholds (an estimated one-third ofhouseholds worldwide) have increased thepressure on women Ð and children too Ð tocontribute to the family income.

For many women, the informal sectorprovides their only opportunity for work,especially if they have few skills to offer. Themodern-sector labour market favours men(except in certain areas, such as the electron-ics industry, where women’ s `nimble fingers’are valued on the assembly line; Mosse1993). Access to the informal sector isrelatively easy, and work can be combinedwith domestic responsibilities. However, asMoser (1991) points out, this usually means amuch longer working day for women, whohave to add this work to their existing tasks.

Formal education and trainingA sound general education provides youngpeople with the best foundation for their

future participation in the employmentmarket. This applies as much to the informalsector, where the basic skills of literacy andnumeracy are essential for most (legitimate)profitable activity, as to the modern sector.Not surprisingly, those whom the educationalsystem has failed to reach, or failed to retainin school, are likely to be found in the leastprofitable economic activities. Women formthe majority in this category, as is obviousfrom the fact that at least two thirds of theworld’ s adult illiterates, who make up theworld’ s poorest people, are female.

From the 1960s, governments haveinvested heavily in formal education for girlsand boys as a means of promoting social andeconomic development. Many developingcountries have also adopted strategies, oftenwith the support of international donors, toget more girls into school. However, despiteenormous gains, in some countries there maybe as many as five male students in highereducation to every female, and schools havegenerally failed to equip young women withthe necessary skills to compete in the labourmarket on equal terms with men.

Vocational opportunities for girls, whenavailable, have been restricted to (or girlsthemselves have chosen) traditional femin-ine’ subjects such as home economics, secret-arial studies, tailoring, hairdressing andbeauty care, which are largely an extension ofhome-based activities, and are usually poorlypaid (assuming that jobs are available).

Thus, the function of education has beenlargely to prepare young women for theirassumed adult roles as housewives andmothers, whereas boys have been preparedfor jobs and careers. Schools have thus servedto reflect and to reinforce the male bias thatprevails throughout the labour market, as inall social relations, which usually placespower in the hands of men.2

Initiatives to introduce education forentrepreneurship into the school curriculum,as in Kenya, Ghana and Malaysia, areunlikely to help women significantly, for theinformal sector reflects the same gender biasas the modern sector. Women everywhere

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experience prejudice and practical difficultiesin establishing themselves in economicallyindependent activity, while the schoolcurriculum continues to project conventionalimages of acceptable activities for womenand men.

A wide range of factors, many of themdeeply embedded in the gendered nature ofculture and society, serve to prevent womenfrom participating in formal education andtraining, and thereafter in employment andself-employment, on equal terms with men.The most important factors include poverty(where choices have to be made, parentsusually choose to educate boys before girls);the greater demand for girls’ labour in thehome; and the `hidden curriculum’ of every-day school practice which presents a male-dominated hierarchy of authority, and social-ises girls into accepting a subordinate adultrole Ð which inevitably means that girls lackself-confidence, and have low expectations ofthemselves.

In general, formal education and training indeveloping countries appears not to acknow-ledge the heavy involvement of women ineconomic activity, and does little to providethem with relevant skills. The genderednature of the curriculum serves to reinforcerather than weaken the social and economicconstraints operating against the equal partic-ipation of women in a labour market which isboth highly competitive and discriminatory.

Non-formal education andtrainingNon-formal education (NFE) has expandedconsiderably in recent decades, withenormous diversity in terms of aims, content,target audience, and teaching methods, and awide range of providers. Much of it isintended to give a `second chance’ to adultsor adolescents who have failed to completethe primary or secondary cycle, and isdirected at basic literacy. NGOs have playeda major role in reaching poor and disadvant-aged people with NFE programmes which

seek either to supplement formal education(as for example through accelerated coursesof basic skills for out-of-school childrenprovided in rural Bangladesh by BRAC, andin urban Nicaragua by the evening schoolprogramme) or to complement it, as forinstance through vocational training schemesfor primary-school leavers or drop-outs, suchas those provided by the Village Polytechnicsin Kenya, and the Botswana Brigades.

Given that much NFE is aimed at thosewho have missed out on formal education, itmight be expected that women, being themajority in this category, should be over-represented in NFE programmes, whichwould seek to compensate for the failure ofthe formal system to provide them withmarketable skills. Unfortunately, most NFEprogrammes have continued to reflect thesame disparities and biases that prevail informal education. For example, basic literacyfor women has often been conceived in termsof enhancing their role as housewives andmothers, focusing on literacy in the context offamily health, nutrition, and communitydevelopment, rather than on literacy (andespecially numeracy) for employment. Andin vocational skills programmes, femaleparticipation rates have been low in manycountries. Vocational training has tradition-ally been directed at males Ð carpentry,metalwork, masonry, and motor mechanicsÐ and at modern-sector employment, wherewomen are under-represented.

Attempts at positive discrimination and theintroduction of quota schemes for women insome countries, to persuade them to enrol onvocational courses that are outside thosedeemed `appropriate’ for them, have not livedup to expectations, with places often remain-ing unfilled. Socio-cultural convention andthe fear of ridicule and harassment by malestudents and teachers have deterred girls fromjoining courses traditionally dominated byboys.

The same constraints affecting formaleducation for girls apply to NFE for femaleadolescents and adults. Indeed there areadditional constraints facing agencies trying

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to improve training opportunities for womenand girls, including:

· low levels of literacy and numeracy amongadult women;

· social constraints on females who havereached puberty or who are married (malemembers of their family may not allowthem to leave the home to take upemployment or to attend training courses);

· lack of time, energy, and mobility forwomen, already over-burdened bydomestic duties, to attend trainingprogrammes;

· lack of child-care facilities in both trainingand employment locations;

· lack of flexibility in the scheduling ofcourses to recognise women’s daily andseasonal workloads and timetables;

· the inappropriateness of training offered(especially when courses are designed bymen);

· lack of part-time and flexible workinghours, job-sharing opportunities, andtransport for those with child-careresponsibilities (even when they havereceived some training).

In addition, difficulties for women inobtaining credit, restrictive labour laws,unequal pay, and the encroachment oftechnology on women’s traditional skill areashave all contributed to the problem ofassisting women into employment.

Income-generating projects forwomenTraining is often a core activity of income-generating projects (IGPs), and in this respectsuch projects form part of the non-formalapproach to education. Training may be eitherin basic literacy and numeracy or in specificskills for employment or self-employment.IGPs for women have mushroomed indeveloping countries, the majority funded andset up by NGOs. Some are free-standingprojects, while others are part of a broaderprogramme of community development or

welfare. Whatever the framework, IGPs forwomen have largely concentrated on supportfor the provision of goods and services whichare an extension of traditional female activityin the home, such as handcrafts or foodproduction. In this respect, as Goodale (1989)points out, they reinforce a narrow view ofwomen’s work, which views female incomeas supplementary to the male’s (as `pinmoney’ ), and a woman’ s productive activitiesas secondary to her reproductive ones. In thissense income generation’ is for women, butjobs’ are for men.

There is growing recognition that women’sprojects which focus on traditional feminineskills for income generation, and are oftencombined with welfare, have not servedwomen well. They have neither brought muchfinancial reward to those involved, norreduced their subordinate and dependentposition in society. Cynics would say that theyoften serve to keep women in low-paid andlow-status economic activity. To some,women have become pawns in a flourishingNGO business, where additional (income-generating) roles are proposed for alreadyover-worked women which require consid-erable inputs of time, money, and energy,often without the women having any clearnotion of what they will gain (Mukhopadyayand March 1992). Traditional female crafts areoften very time-consuming, and provide littlesustainable income, while the more lucrativecrafts are generally monopolised by men.

This is not the place to detail the numerousreasons for such a disappointing record.Rather, I want here to consider issues regard-ing training in IGPs for women, with a viewto establishing the extent to which inapp-ropriate approaches to training have contrib-uted to their generally poor performance.

Caroline Moser, well known for her workon gender planning, suggests that women’sprojects have largely failed because they havesought only to address the question ofincreasing women’ s productivity and income,without attempting to improve their status insociety (Moser 1991). In other words, theyare only addressing women’ s practical,

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immediate needs for survival. Conventionalformal and non-formal training opportunitiesfor women can be viewed as subscribing tothis approach. However, women’ s projectsneed also to address women’ s strategic needsto overcome their subordinate position insociety. This requires challenging patriarchalsocial structures such as the legal system,property rights, and labour codes, whichmaintain men in positions of power.Likewise, if the educational system is tobecome a true source of economic and socialmobility for women, it needs to address theseissues.

Women’s programmes which have soughtto do this have tended to adopt an`empowerment’ approach. In India, SEWA(The Self-Employed Women’ s Association),founded in 1972, is an early example of agrassroots organisation which essentiallyseeks to empower and mobilise women, inthis case in the workplace. More recently, inthe UK, Oxfam (through its Gender Team Ðformerly known as the Gender andDevelopment Unit) and WOMANKINDoffer support to more ambitious initiativeswhere women seek to challenge theirsubordinate status in society. This bolderapproach is also beginning to attract fundingfrom some official donors, who appear readyto give support through NGO channels toprogrammes which they might not wish tofund through direct bilateral aid. However,most grassroots women’s organisations aresmall and, despite increasing recognition oftheir effectiveness in improving women’sposition in society, they remain largelyunsupported by national governments andinternational agencies, because of theircommitment to radical social and politicalchange.

Lessons to be learned fromtraining initiatives for womenA number of common characteristics, andweaknesses, in the supply of training emergefrom a brief review of the literature on

training for women in the informal sector.The most significant lessons are summarisedbelow.

Education and training alone are notenoughAccess to education and training for womenis not sufficient to increase their participationin the labour market on equal terms withmen. While training may sometimes improvewomen’ s (and men’ s) income-earning oppor-tunities, expectations of the impact of trainingon work opportunities for women are oftenunrealistic. As long as gender discriminationcontinues to exist in the labour market in boththe formal (or modern) and informal sectorsof the economy, women will be disadvan-taged in their search for work, and they willneed additional support in order to succeed inobtaining a greater share of worthwhile jobs.

Unfortunately, training is often offeredwith little or no knowledge of the potentialmarket for a particular product or skill, of thelevel of start-up capital required, or of thelikely problems that women will encounterwhen seeking to enter a new market. One ofthe strengths of SEWA, for example, hasbeen its insistence on undertaking surveys ofthe socio-economic conditions in whichwomen work, and assessments of marketopportunities, before offering training in aparticular skill area (Jumani 1989, Goodale1989).

An integrated approach to training isrequiredWomen’ s projects need a supportiveenvironment within which to operate. Forthis, an integrated approach which combinesa number of strategies (which may includetraining) is necessary. This has been one ofthe strengths of SEWA. In other successfulprojects, the integration of training,production, and employment is cited as acontributory factor.

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Access to credit may be moreimportant than training

In some cases, training may not be asimportant as access to credit, whether througha sponsoring agency or through the bankingsystem. Often a small amount is all that isrequired to get a small business orcooperative off the ground. Some argue thatproviding credit is the most cost-effectiveform of support to poor women.

Access to credit is rarely easy for the poor,but women are likely to experience muchgreater difficulty than men in procuring evensmall loans, especially from High Streetbanks, which treat poor illiterate women withdisdain. Sometimes, large organisations likeSEWA have started their own banks throughfrustration with the regular banking system.This was the rationale behind the famousGrameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Banks need to be persuaded, for examplethrough awareness campaigns or governmentincentives, to lend to women setting up smallbusinesses or cooperatives. They should takenote of the increasing evidence that womenare more reliable in repaying loans than men.This has encouraged some NGOs to set uploan schemes for women. For example, in theK-REP `Chikola’ scheme in Kenya, therepayment rate of loans from the rotatingfund to women’s groups over the first twoyears was 100 per cent, and the scheme hasbeen rapidly expanded. In India, WOMAN-KIND Worldwide is supporting a rotatingloan scheme which helps tribal women toobtain government and bank loans. Thewomen’s conscientious handling of the loanshas made the banks much more ready to lendto them, and has helped to enhance theireconomic and social status in the community.

Women need additional supportservicesIn addition to obtaining credit and receivingtraining, poor women need other supportservices if they are to initiate and sustainviable economic activities. These might

include any of the following: a social securityscheme, legal advice, business advice,housing and child-care facilities, employmentopportunities through cooperatives, and tradeunion representation. One of the remarkablefeatures of SEWA’s integrated approach isthat by providing a range of support services,it has offered some security to women inwhat are to them high-risk areas of economicactivity (Jumani 1989). While the cost ofproviding such facilities and benefits cannotbe ignored (and is viewed by manyemployers as a major disincentive to theemployment of women), efficiently andrealistically run services can reap benefits interms of increased productivity and incomes,which allow them ultimately to become self-financing.

One-off training programmes areinsufficientWomen, just as much as men, needopportunities to re-train and upgrade theirskills, and continuing access to vocationaland/or career guidance. Women’ s trainingneeds have overall received less attentionthan men’ s, largely because women are seenas marginal to or invisible in the employmentmarket (Goodale 1989). Because trainingopportunities have been denied them, theyremain in low-status, low-skill work.

Career advice for women, both within andoutside the formal educational system, hasbeen either non-existent or heavily gender-biased. Many women have basic skillsacquired in the home or in traditionalapprenticeship, but skill upgrading wouldallow them to produce a wider range ofproducts and enter new spheres of enterprise,and make them more employable.

Training in technical skills is not enoughTraining for employment has traditionallybeen conceived as involving narrow technicaland vocational skills. This is insufficient forthe majority of young people who will seekself-employment in the informal sector.

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Technical and vocational training must becombined with basic business, marketing, andentrepreneurial skills.

Women also need to learn to view theireconomic activities as potentially profit-generating, and to make decisions accordingto business principles, rather than accordingto household or kinship considerations(Walsh and Nelson 1991). While someBritish development agencies still offer onlybasic skills training (for instance in hand-crafts), this is increasingly combined withbusiness skills development.

Traditional ‘female’ skills offer littleopportunity for sustainable incomeNGOs have concentrated overwhelmingly ontraining women in traditional skills such astailoring, embroidery, knitting, and foodproduction, which offer little opportunity forraising income levels significantly or forfuture expansion. Markets may not be readilyavailable, or may be already saturated byother local women’s products, or by cheapimports. The skills acquired through shorttraining courses may not be adequate toproduce high-quality goods.

Women will be particularly disadvantagedin this respect when they try to enter new skillareas where men are already well entrenched.However, in the long term, only skillstraining which goes beyond existing tradi-tional activities for women can help them tomove into genuine entrepreneurship.

Women need help to break into newareas of economic activityTo break into new areas of economic activity,women will need assistance, as they are likelyto face hostility and resentment from menwho see their livelihoods threatened. Inaddition, women face social disapprovalwhere there are strongly entrenched socialand cultural norms which limit theirinvolvement in the labour market. Change isnot impossible, as some small success storiesshow. For example, in India there are

admirable examples of women breaking intothe traditional male preserves of dairying,weaving, pottery, and masonry, despite strongmale disapproval (Iyer 1991).

Women need training in personal andsocial developmentTo counter discrimination and hostility whenthey attempt to enter non-traditional areas ofactivity, women will need additional trainingin personal development. This may includetraining in leadership, assertiveness, themanagement of stress and discrimination, andself-confidence building. Women oftenunderestimate their ability to earn an incomeor to manage non-domestic affairs. Moreradical approaches may include programmesto increase women’ s awareness of their rightsas workers, to analyse women’s subordin-ation in society, and to teach mobilisationtechniques.

Some funding agencies, particularly NGOs,have started to provide personal and socialdevelopment training for women. SEWA hasbeen doing this for a long time. Others suchas KYTEC in Kenya provide gender-awareness training for men as well as forwomen. In the UK, the CommonwealthSecretariat has a manual for trainers Ð`Entrepreneurial Skills for Young Women’(1992) Ð which includes sessions on genderawareness and achievement motivation.

Attitude and behaviour change isessentialWithout a change in attitude and behaviourtowards women working outside the home,women will not achieve equality in the labourmarket. Offering training opportunities towomen, in particular in the more profitableskill areas, will not be successful until socialand cultural conventions concerning appro-priate roles for men and women in societychange. While women are increasingly takingon male roles, for example in supporting thefamily economically, men rarely reciprocateby taking on female roles, such as sharing

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child-care or domestic responsibilities.Governments therefore need to embark onmedia campaigns to influence attitudesconcerning women’s role in the labourmarket and the division of labour in thehome, which should be addressed to a widerange of people: teachers and educationalpersonnel, male members of the family,community leaders, career advisers, employ-ers, politicians, planners and policy-makers,and women themselves.

Some attempts have been made to providegender-awareness training for governmentand NGO staff (male and female) who workwith women. For instance, the Namibiangovernment commissioned a group of Britishconsultants to provide gender training forministry officials. Some British NGOs rungender training workshops for their own staff,either at their administrative headquarters orin their field offices (for example, Oxfam,Save the Children Fund, and ACORD),though these represent only a tiny proportionof all the NGO initiatives involving supportto women. Useful resources include Oxfam’sGender Training Manual (Williams et al.1994), and the `Guidelines for Good Practicein Gender and Development’ produced by theNational Alliance of Women Organisations(NAWO) at the request of ODA, for use withNGO personnel. Other agencies, such asWorld University Service (WUS) in ElSalvador, organise courses for NGO staff.WOMANKIND Worldwide in India plans agender training course for male NGO staff.

Access to information is importantThere is often a lack of information directlyaccessible to women on training-relatedassistance, and employment opportunities.Greater publicity is needed, of a kind that willreach women (Goodale 1989).

Literacy and numeracy are essentialLiteracy is not only a basic human right; it isnecessary for all types of employment, andespecially for self-employment, where

planning, production, marketing, and obtain-ing credit all require literacy and numeracy.For rural women (who make up most of theworld’ s illiterate adults) training for incomegeneration may need to start with basicliteracy and numeracy. However, such train-ing should both recognise women’s existinginvolvement in economic activity, and avoidpassing on the message that they are ignorantin all respects. Women have invisible’abilities acquired in the home and theycontinually innovate with the resourcesavailable to them; but their skills, knowledge,and inventions often remain unrecogniseddue to their lack of visibility in theemployment market (Appleton 1993).

Literacy can give women greaterconfidence and an improved self-image(Bown 1990), which in itself may boost theirchances of survival in highly competitivemarkets. Some literacy programmes haveserved to encourage women to set up theirown income-generating organisations orcooperatives. In other cases, women whowere already engaged in the informal sectorwished to acquire minimal literacy andnumeracy, for example to allow them to keepaccounts or to take measurements, and thenwere motivated to look beyond immediateincome generation to press for better healthcare and greater parity with men. In thisrespect, literacy can act as a mobilising forcefor women.

Training methods must be appropriateMany training institutions offer courseswhich assume a certain level of literacy andare too abstract and theoretical for poorwomen. These are the people who most needtraining but have the least time and mobility,and little or no experience of a formallearning environment. Training needs to bepractical, related to women’ s experiences,communicated in an appropriate way, and ofdirect relevance to the problems and barriersthat they perceive. It needs to be of goodquality, with adequate provision of equipmentwhere appropriate. Participatory methods,

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role play, practical demonstrations, and fieldvisits may facilitate learning. Womenteachers may be necessary or preferable, andact as role models for participants.

The pattern of training offered must takeinto account women’ s daily circumstances.This usually means that training should beshort and recurrent, for most women havelittle time to spare, and are not used to sittingin a classroom. It should be locally based,with child-care and transport provided wherenecessary. Timing should also be flexible tofit in with women’s existing workloads.

The media can be used to reach illiteratewomen, and extension workers and mobiletrainers, used extensively in health andagriculture, can also provide training towomen in remote areas.

There is some debate about whether formal(structured) or informal (unstructured)training is more effective, efficient, andappropriate. Formal training in a classroomsituation risks being too rigid and too abstractfor the type of participants enrolled. Informaltraining, consisting usually of business adviceand information on a one-to-one basis as andwhen requested by the client, can be moreeffective and sometimes cheaper.

Successful women can act as trainersand role modelsSome of the most successful small-scaletraining programmes have been ones wherewomen have started income-generatingactivities and then have trained others in thesame skills. For example, in the SKVISproject in India, funded by Christian Aid, agroup of women who set up an IGP receivedrequests from others to train them in makingsaris, crafts, scarves, and bedspreads. A seriesof Commonwealth Secretariat leaflets (1991-2) describes how successful businesswomenhave taught entrepreneurial skills to otherwomen. In addition these women, asentrepreneurs, offer powerful role models toothers.

Group training has important benefits

Some agencies believe that training should beoffered to groups, such as members of acooperative, rather than to individuals. This isa common NGO strategy in community-based development programmes. Training forindividuals is considered wasteful, becauseonly a small percentage of those trained maybecome successful entrepreneurs, whereas allgroup members will derive some benefit fromthe training.

There are additional benefits for women ofa group approach. While some critics aredismissive of welfare-type projects whichadopt a participatory approach (and areunlikely to become financially self-supporting), the benefits of group efforts interms of increased self-esteem and self-awareness, and the creation of mutual supportand mobilisation mechanisms, are alsovaluable in themselves. However, it isimportant to be aware that even a groupstrategy is likely to exclude the poorest andthe most marginalised (ACORD 1992).

Some recommendationsWhile men also face many problems inseeking employment and self-employment,women face a different set of constraintswhich must be taken into account whenoffering training or other assistance withinthe informal sector. As Goodale (1989)argues, women’s access to and control ofresources in production processes, and theirparticipation in decision-making, are quitedifferent from those of men. Efforts toimprove women’ s opportunities in theinformal sector have to respond to the factthat they are largely situated at the bottomend of the labour market, and that there aresocial, cultural, and economic factors whichinhibit them from benefiting from trainingand employment opportunities on an equalbasis with men. At the same time, it isunlikely that IGPs will increase women’s

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income significantly, unless they assist themboth to enter new areas of economic activityand to challenge their subordinate position insociety.

Recommendations that emerge from thisbrief review of the education and training ofwomen for the informal sector are listedbelow.

1 With regard to formal education, govern-ments need to initiate and enforce policiesand programmes which encourage girls toenrol and to stay in school. Girls should alsobe encouraged to study mathematics, science,and technology in greater numbers, and todiversify into a broader range of vocationalsubjects. The gender bias in textbooks mustbe removed and more female teachers shouldbe recruited, especially in the male-dominated vocational and technical fields.

2 Governments should legislate to removediscriminatory employment practices and toensure equitable employment and self-employment opportunities for women, whichwould make a wider choice of subjectspecialisation in formal education moreattractive to girls. This will requireovercoming structural factors which keepwomen in low-paid and low-skill jobs and insubsistence self-employment (constraintssuch as lack of access to land, credit andother resources, and restrictions on femaleownership of land and property).

3 Removing the constraints on the equalparticipation of girls at all levels of educationwill require changes in socio-culturalattitudes which determine people’s percep-tions of appropriate female roles, and willrequire a fuller awareness of the value andbenefit of women’s participation in theemployment market. In particular, it isimportant to question the sexual division oflabour between the home and the workplace,and to overcome employers’ reluctance toengage women.

4 Agencies working in non-formaleducation and promoting the training ofwomen for the informal sector need to move

beyond offering training in skills whichreinforce women’ s position in low-skill, low-paid jobs.

5 Agencies must recognise that the provisionof technical skills must be supplemented bybusiness, management, and marketing skills.Such training is likely to require specialistagency staff and provision for the training oftrainers, and advisers to work with localcommunities.3

6 Training must be flexible to respond towomen’ s different needs and levels ofeducation in terms of length of training,location, course content, child-care andtransport facilities, and the language ofinstruction. Above all, the women themselvesmust be consulted about what they perceivetheir needs to be.

7 There needs to be a more realisticassessment of what is feasible in terms oftraining and employment opportunities forwomen with regard to the demands onwomen’ s time, and their need to generate aprofit.

8 Training and back-up need to be directedsystematically at the informal sector, ifwomen are to survive economically. At thesame time, feasibility studies are needed toascertain areas of market demand, the level ofincome that can reasonably be generated, andthe likely problems that women will face.

9 While training in business skills may beessential for women to set up and sustaintheir own enterprises, training should alsoaddress the broader issue of women’s self-development, especially among the poor, andshould include sessions on gender-awareness,assertiveness, and confidence-building.

10 Agencies need to provide their own staffwith gender training and, where necessary, tomake structural changes within their ownorganisations to reflect a more equitablegender balance. At the same time, they needto employ staff with skills in business,marketing, promotion, and project manage-ment.

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11 Governments need to initiate policieswhich will improve women’ s access tomarkets, raw materials, credit, businessadvice, and other forms of support, and totraining programmes geared to local marketsand technologies.

In conclusion, this review suggests thatthere is an urgent need for detailed andpolicy-related research and evaluation of themost effective strategies for training foremployment and self-employment amongwomen; for study of the constraints faced bywomen in pursuing careers in male-dominated fields; and for research into theoutcomes of training programmes for women.Agencies working with women need toolswith which to weigh up the relative value ofoffering credit-only programmes againstthose which offer credit-plus-training, ortraining-only. They need guidance on theappropriate balance of technical skills,business skills, and personal development intraining programmes; and they need to knowwhat style of training is most effective in thelong term.

Notes1 This paper is based on research which

formed part of a study commissioned bythe British Overseas Development Admin-istration (ODA) in 1993 entitled `Educa-tion and Training for the Informal Sector(by S. McGrath and K. King with F. Leachand R. Carr Hill). It draws extensively onthe published literature and on reportswhich a number of NGOs kindly madeavailable to me, for which I remainindebted.

2 There are of course other biases in both theeducational system and the labour market,ethnicity and class being the mostimportant. The school curriculum projectsan unreal image of women’s lives, in partbecause it is based on a narrow middle-class view of reality, in which the domesticideal’ may have some meaning.

3 In the UK, the Durham Business Schoolruns a short training course called `WomenMean Business’ for business advisers andtrainers from other countries.

ReferencesACORD (l992) `Economic Interest Groups

and their Relevance for Women’sDevelopment’ , occasional paper no. 5,Research and Policy Programme (RAPP),London: ACORD

Appleton, H. (l993) `Women: invisibletechnologists’ , Appropriate Technology 20(2), London: Intermediate TechnologyPublications

Bown, L. (1990) `Preparing the Future:Women, Literacy and Development’ ,ActionAid Development Report No 4,Chard, Somerset: ActionAid

Commonwealth Secretariat (1991-2) Aseries of leaflets on youth enterprise in theCommonwealth, London: CommonwealthSecretariat

Commonwealth Secretariat (1992) Entre-preneurial Skills for Young Women: AManual for Trainers, London: Common-wealth Secretariat

Goodale, G. (1989) `Training for women inthe informal sector’ , in F. Fluitman (ed):Training for Work in the Informal Sector,Geneva: ILO

Iyer, L. (1991) Diversification of Women’sOccupations through Training: India,Training Discussion Paper No 61, Geneva:ILO

Jumani, U. (1989) `Training of women in theinformal sector: The experience of the Self-Employed Women’ s Association (SEWA),Ahmedabad, India’ , in F. Fluitman (ed):Training for Work in the Informal Sector,Geneva: ILO

Moser, C. (1991) `Gender planning in theThird World: meeting practical andstrategic gender needs’ , in T. Wallace andC. March (eds): Changing Perceptions:Writings on Gender and Development,Oxford: Oxfam (UK and Ireland)

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Mosse, J.C. (1993) Half the World, Half aChance, Oxford: Oxfam (UK and Ireland)

Mukhopadyay, M. and C. March (1992)Income Generating Projects: A View fromthe Grassroots, Report on a workshop inKampala, Uganda, Oxfam DiscussionPaper, Oxford: Oxfam (UK and Ireland)

Walsh, M. K. and C. Nelson (1991) `A casefor business training with women’sgroups’ , Small Enterprise Development 2(1): 13-19

Williams, S. et al. (1994) The Oxfam GenderTraining Manual, Oxford: Oxfam (UK andIreland)

The author

Fiona Leach lectures in education anddevelopment at the Institute of Education,University of London. She has workedextensively in Africa on ODA-fundedprojects in education, and has conductedresearch for the ODA on the training ofwomen for the informal sector. She can becontacted at Institute of Education, 20Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL, UK; tel:+44 (0171) 580 1122; fax: +44 (0171) 6126632.

Fiona Leach

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