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179 Personal Reflection: Opportunit ies and Traps—T he Informal Labor Market Pr a mila Patten, M aurit ius It was not long after I joined the Committee in 2003 that I realized that I had earned the reputation of an “Article 11 fanatic.” That was mainly because during the examination of States Parties’ reports, I regularly posed questions on the situation of women in the informal sector and expressed my concerns about the increase of females in the global workforce in the informal economy and the plight of women who are outside the world of full-time, stable, and protected employment. As a Committee member from the African region, I am very sensitive to the significant number of African women who sustain themselves in a variety of largely traditional activities because they are unable to get “proper” work. Their work in the informal sector is a much larger source of their income security than this sector is for men, and they are numerous in the lowest-paid and most exploited categories of work, namely in small enterprises, in the simplest types of self-employment, as outworkers, in domestic work, and as unpaid family workers. Work in the informal sector comprises 48 percent of nonagricultural work in North Africa, 84 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, and as much as 90 percent of total employment in those countries that include agriculture in their estimates of informal employment (International Labour Organization 2002). While globalization has created some new job opportunities for women in the formal labor market, it has also led to an expansion of the informal labor sector. Although both men and women work in the informal sector and are both affected by the slow or even negative growth of formal sector employment opportunities, the detrimental effects have been more severe on women. Within the informal economy, women are more often found in work associated with low and unstable earnings and with high risks of poverty. Women in informal work are also often excluded from formal social protection programs. The concept of the “informal sector” continues to evolve, and its definition also has become more sophisticated, as scholars and international organizations express renewed interest in it. In recent years, a broader definition has been adopted to incorporate the whole dimension of informality, including both enterprise and employment relations (International Labour Organization 1999). Thus, the informal sector may be described as very small-scale units owned and operated by largely independent, self-employed persons, sometimes also employing family labor or a few hired workers and apprentices. These units produce and distribute goods and services with very little capital and a low level of technology. Work in these enterprises is highly unstable and incomes are generally if not low, certainly irregular. Although data remain somewhat unreliable, there is consensus that the informal sector is steadily growing in almost all developing countries with women significantly dominating the two largest subgroups of the informal workforce, namely home-based work and street vending. Sixty percent or more women in the developing world work in this informal sector outside agriculture, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the statistic is 84 percent (International Labour Organization 2002). There is also reason to believe that the actual figures are much higher, since women often take on multiple activities, especially in rural areas. The Committee has not remained indifferent to the situation of women in the informal sector: Its written lists of issues and questions sent to States Parties before consideration of their reports; the oral dialogue with States Parties in the examination of reports; and its concluding comments testify to its concern for the welfare of women in the informal sector. But States Parties’ reports often contain very little information about women in the informal sector. States Parties invoke the nonformal organizational structures as well as the diverse activities and modes of operation within them as major impediments to data collection. Traditionally, therefore, informal sector activities in the national accounts of many developing countries are underestimated, based on assumptions of low productivity and income. Just as Article 10 of the Convention on education, which does not explicitly refer to “informal education,” covers both formal and informal education, Article 11, which prohibits discrimination against women in the field of employment, also covers both formal employment and work in the informal sector, although it does not explicitly mention the latter. In addressing the scope of the Convention to protect women in the informal sector, Article 11 must be read in conjunction with other...

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