Higglers in Kingston: Women's Informal Work in Jamaica

1. Intersectionality and the Politics of Embodiment

21 1 Intersectionality and the Politics of Embodiment The great variety of experiences that characterize women’s lives in the periphery requires a special effort to conceptualize a paradigm to include all factors having an influence on the complexity of their subordination. —Lourdes Beneria and Martha Roldan, The Crossroads of Class and Gender In recent years, policymakers in the international development field have viewed female microenterprises as solutions to sustainable development as the economies of developing nations continue to contract under pressures of keeping pace with an evolving global economy.1 International development agencies and practitioners applaud the entrepreneurial spirits of poor women as they eke out a living in the informal economy. The assumption is that small-scale enterprising activities will improve not only the living standards of poor women, but also their national economies (de Soto 1989; de Soto and Orsini 1991; Dignard and Havet 1995). Fueled by this optimism, the World Bank has increased credit and training opportunities to female microentrepreneurs in informal economies in developing countries. The hope is that once they are properly nurtured, these microbusinesses will help alleviate poverty (Ehlers and Main 1998; Eversole 2004; Grasmuck and Espinal 2000; Tinker 2000). Despite this great optimism, however, most female microentrepreneurs have failed to achieve the level of economic success that was predicted, and have continued to live in poverty. Development practitioners often attribute these failures to the purportedly problematic ways in which these microbusinesses are organized. Operating on the assumption that markets are free and value neutral, they assume that once women have the opportunities and tools needed to participate effectively in these markets, their living standards and eventually their economies will improve. 22 Higglers in Kingston Feminist scholars have challenged these assumptions by illuminating the importance of gender in the development and success of female microenterprises. Many have argued that in their assessment of women ’s work and success, international development agencies tend to rely on a market-oriented model that fails to consider the impact of social conditions, particularly gender inequality, that structure opportunities for women in distinct ways. These scholars maintain that purely economic and gender-neutral models miss various hidden barriers women encounter as they try to make a living, and leave us instead with a distorted image of women as poor candidates for business endeavors. Most microenterprise credit and training organizations are often guilty of these assumptions and develop programs that further constrain women ’s microenterprise development instead of enhancing it (Dignard and Havet 1995; Ehlers and Main 1998; Grasmuck and Espinal 2000; Kantor 2005; Mayoux 2001; Milgram 2005; Tinker 2003). Feminist scholars have also argued that a theoretical lens that examines the impact of gender inequality on the work experiences of women will provide better insights into the successes and failures of female microenterprises . Catherine Van der Wees and Henny Romijn (1995) note, for example, that while female microentrepreneurs face problems similar to those commonly faced by all microentrepreneurs (lack of capital, training, managerial experience, etc.), their problems are exacerbated by subtle barriers involving the underestimation of women’s economic roles, gender-role stereotyping, lack of confidence in women’s entrepreneurial and managerial skills, and the relegation of women to low-productivity sectors in the informal economy. Greater attention to gender allows scholars to clarify the particular experiences of women in the informal economy and to develop policies that directly address their challenges. Although I agree with this argument, I am left with the following questions: How do we conceptualize “women” in our analyses of microenterprise development? For example, can we assume that Afro-Jamaican higglers face problems in the informal economy similar to those of women of different racial/color groups?2 In a society where racial/color categories carry important meanings and shape social relationships, can we assume that these categories fail to apply in the informal economy?3 How can we conceptualize “women’s informal work” in ways that resist treating that work as an abstract category and the informal worker as either disembodied or simply gendered? My goal in this study, then, is to nuance and perhaps broaden the analytical category of “women’s informal work” by examining the sociohistorical contexts in which that work takes place, illuminating multiple, Intersectionality and the Politics of Embodiment 23 intersecting hierarchies of power and conceptual frameworks that shape the ways in which that work is imagined and experienced. This approach uncovers a wide range of women...