Livelihood Response Paper - Baccus

We began our discussion of livelihood with readings focused on developing women’s involvement in the informal economy, which is by no means minuscule. In fact, Chen notes that the informal economy is where most women in developing countries work. Furthermore, “women are overrepresented in the informal economy worldwide” (Chen). In other words, there are more women in this sector than men in almost every country. However, what I found most intriguing about our discussion of the informal sector was not that it was dominated by females, but that it had a strong male/ female work divide. Gender roles carry forward in the developing world’s informal sector in a way similar to how they did when females first entered the formal economy of the United States. Women work a category of jobs distinct from men. Men in the informal economy tend to have larger businesses while women often have small businesses frequently related to food. Women too are paid less than men in the informal sector, and this pay gap is far starker than even the same gap in the formal economy. Considering the lack of social protection in the informal economy and this distinct gender divide, women in developing countries who work in the informal economy must have a much harder time breaking out of gender norms than if they worked in the formal economy. If this is the case, wouldn’t it be better to legalize the formal economy to empower and protect these women who make up the majority of informal employees? This might be an easy leap to make, but the truth is that, as we read, the informal economy provides a much needed market for the most impoverished communities in developing countries. Informal goods are sold at a much lower cost than in the formal market. Thus, I believe that until there are institutional and market changes in developing countries to accommodate for the poorest segment of their societies where women and girls are the vast majority, the informal economy is an extremely necessary element in the present-day despite the limitations and dangers it places on informal women workers.

The fact that women in comparison to men do tend to run smaller businesses in the informal economy of the developing world crossed my mind again when we discussed microcredit. Microcredit often primarily targets women and accordingly often focuses not only on income generation but simultaneously on female empowerment. However, is it truly empowering women if microcredit loans are still locking them into small businesses? While some women break the mold, as we discovered in our readings, most women micro-lenders do not produce massive businesses. They often use profits for their children’s education or for improvements for their families in general. Thus, they do not reinvest in their businesses and these businesses consequently stay small. Considering these facts, perhaps female empowering microcredit initiatives might not be empowering women or breaking with traditional gender roles as much as they perpetuate to do so. Moreover, they could simply be reinforcing gender norms. The UNIFEM article we read notes that microfinance loans cause many women to feel overloaded and overworked and this predicament could stem from such a perpetuation of traditional gender roles. Many women borrowers in developing countries are still responsible for the household as well as their small business, which is a double burden that in itself limits the growth of their businesses and their empowerment.

The last aspect of female livelihood in the developing world that our readings addressed was the sex trade. Kempadoo notes that there is an underlying exoticism to the sex trade. Women sex workers are appealing because they are often different from the women in the culture of their clients. The more I thought about this rational, albeit its truth, the more it angered me because it innately means that these “exotic” women sex workers are being valued less than the women of the clients’ culture in a huge way. Why should women who choose to be sex workers be dehumanized in this way? Furthermore, does this mindset not also perpetuate the notion that feeds illegal sex work and forced prostitution? Our readings best described this exoticism as a remnant of colonialism itself and I would have to agree.

Our readings also addressed the blurry line between forced sex work and sex work of a voluntary nature. In developing cultures, sometimes women willingly enter sex work as simply another means of income generation. Other times, they are tricked into sex work unknowingly with promises of improved lives and income generation for their family. Sometimes even if these women get the opportunity to leave sex work, they continue it because it is the only thing that they know. As our readings and discussion pointed out, the bigger issue in all of this is that poverty itself is disempowering and perhaps this means that the truest form of slavery in the modern day developing world is in fact poverty itself too and not simply its products, which include forced and voluntary sex work in the developing world.

In Bangladesh, approximately 200,000 women and girls are sex workers. Many of these girls are sold to brothels by their impoverished families. According the British charity Action Aid, ninety percent of these female sex workers are addicted to steroids. Many female sex workers in Bangladesh are given steroids typically used to fatten up livestock when they join or are forced into brothels. This is done in order to hide the actual age of the girls who are too often young teenagers. In Bangladesh, sex work is legal in a few small, state-recognized brothels and Bengali laws specify that legal female sex workers must be at least 18 years old. However, the existence of the law alone clearly does not prevent underage girls from entering sex work and in fact might actually further encourage their potentially fatal use of steroids.