EMPLOYMENT 
Gender
Informal Employment
REGIONAL INITIATIVE ON INFORMAL ECONOMIES OF ARAB STATES:
A GENDER EQUALITY AND WORKERS' RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE
The nature of employment is rapidly and dramatically changing around the world, including in Arab States. The increasing flexibility of labour markets at global and local levels has led to a rise of informal employment, self-employment and atypical forms of employment. This process, termed as informalization, has been accompanied by an increase of insecurity and poverty. Informalization also has a gendered nature with differential earnings, choices and locations of activities, level of competition, and time
allocated to work, with significant implications for women, especially young women in Arab States. While employment is the main path out of poverty, International Labour Organization (ILO) Decent Work Agenda underscores the significance of quality as well as quantity of jobs generated.
Official statistics, laws, policies, and programmes have not been sufficiently capturing the informalization of jobs, thereby impeding the much needed extension of social protection to informal workers, especially in Arab States. To fill the gap, the ILO and Center for Arab Women Training and Research (CAWTAR) launched in January 2007 a regional initiative on Gender Equality and Workers’ Rights in the Informal Economies of Arab States. Funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Arab Gulf Programme for United Nations Development Organizations (AGFUND), and the ILO, this two-year initiative aims to mainstream Arab States into the current global thinking on informal employment using the perspective of gender equality and workers’ rights.
In this initiative, the concept of informal employment is used to refer to the characteristics of the job rather than the characteristics of the economic unit, and explicitly relates to social protection and entitlements. The size of informal employment is computed through direct calculations and indirect estimations based on official surveys. Furthermore, a gender equality and workers’ rights perspective is applied to the analysis of informal employment in the Palestinian context. This perspective highlights the need to use labour rights and other relevant human rights standards to identify the problems facing informal workers, the political, economic, social, and cultural causes and consequences of informalization, and the claims, responsibilities, capabilities and actions required. It suggests ways to introduce policies and programmes providing equal opportunities to women and men; transform institutional norms, rules, procedures, and attitudes; and prioritize the rights of informal workers to exercise choices, access resources and remedies, gain voice, and organize towards equality of access, benefits, and genuine empowerment.
The research emerging from this regional initiative is disseminated through regional meetings and national policy round tables in the form of policy briefs, country case studies (West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon), a glossary of terms as well as a regional overview. The research is intended to influence the thinking within the government, workers’ and employers’ organizations, research institutions, and international agencies.
