INFORMAL ECONOMY AND GENDER

Although some transformations have taken place, the gender division of work keeps appointing women exclusively to house chores, reproductive activities and home and family care tasks. Besides, social and demographic changes are taking place, such as migration, the increase of divorce rates, and women who are head of families, etc. The effects of this division are expressed through an overload of work without social acknowledgment, lack of time for training and entertainment and a deficient access to information systems which reduces the opportunities to enter the labour world, the possibilities of participating in social life and politics and decision-making chances. These, among others, are some of the causes why women usually represent the majority in the performance of informal activities.

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In the year 2001, 49.7 per cent of female work was informal, while in the case of men the figure was 43.8 per cent. At the same time, within the informal economy, women are concentrated on the most unstable, unprotected and precarious categories, therefore their opportunities of insertion are lower than that of men. Furthermore, they are prone to become employees in small-scale economic units, where their contribution is invisible and they are practically not taken into account. It is also frequent that women take up agricultural activities which, in many countries of the region are not even considered within the statistical systems.

Among informal sector activities, home-based work, own account work and domestic work are, proportionally, the most relevant categories in the total amount of female workers. Home-based work offers women the chance of making compatible their domestic and family responsibilities with paid activities. To the traditional tasks of the textile and dress-making sector, new technological services (such as telesales, consultancies, Internet, etc.) are added, as well as outsourced manufacturing productive stages, small in-bond industries and others related to the transfer of many domestic activities to the productive environment. This generates a highly heterogeneous scope both in terms of the conditions and rhythms, and in the educational and training requirements. In the case of activities that require higher technological expertise and qualifications, there are better conditions such as the existence of a written contract, benefits and social provisions similar to those enjoyed by people who work in enterprises, with salaries that are competitive in the labour market . In the case of women, home-based work is also at home, which means that the boundaries between paid work and domestic chores become blurred. In turn, men generally work at a special working place, even next to their houses and they usually have a helper so that their working day is not so long. Own account female workers lead in the growth of jobs, generating 9 of 10 new job posts for women.

The sectors with fewer qualification requirements concentrate the conditions of higher instability and lack of social protection. In general, contracts are verbal and do not consider any kind of social protection or minimum wage and they are paid by the piece or on delivery. On the other hand, domestic work (the category which has the lowest salaries and social protection within the informal sector) provides 22 per cent of the new jobs for women generated between 1990 and 1998. Therefore, the same happens with other dimensions and training policies strategies, the incorporation of the gender perspective into the informal economy is fundamental to improve its quality and relevance.

The gender analysis of the informal economy is not restricted to the identification of differences between men and women; it involves a group of dimensions that intervene in social relations and, from them, the adjustments to be made to policies and institutions in order to reach fair goals. The perspective of gender helps to interpret data, to create new indicators and suggest how the existing gaps can be reduced.

The materials that are presented contribute to the analysis and reflection into an approach or an understanding of the labour world that integrates the gender approach.