Introduction
Training of women for the informal sector
Formal education and training
Non-formal education and training
Income generating projects for women
Research-based findings on the training needs of women in the informal sector
In many countries a very high proportion of all female employment is absorbed by the informal sector. For example, in India, the organised or formal sector of the economy, which employs an estimated 19% of the total workforce, accounts for only an estimated 6% of all female workers (Iyer 1991). This means that 94% of the female workforce are engaged in various informal sector and/or household activities. These informal activities for women range from subsistence farming, petty trading and hawking, through wage employment in unregulated small enterprises or home-based contract work for larger formal sector firms, to ownership of small businesses. In many developing countries there are more women than men in the informal sector.
While women are to be found in all types of informal sector work, they are disproportionately grouped at the lower end of the scale, in subsistence self-employment, and grossly under-represented at the entrepreneurship end of the self-employment scale, where they usually experience greater problems than men in setting up and sustaining their own businesses. Most women are involved in various kinds of low-income activity, in casual or seasonal work, often of an unskilled and physically demanding nature, with low productivity, long hours and little opportunity for upward mobility. They are an easy prey for unscrupulous money-lenders and contractors. Iyer ( 1991 ) offers the following characteristics of women working in the informal sector:
casual or irregular employment with little or no social security benefitsfalling outside the scope of protective labour legislation
predominance of sub-contracting jobs done for the organised sector, engaging women and children at lower wages than men
deplorable working conditions, often without basic amenities
very limited opportunities for skill upgradation or improved production techniques
little if any trade union participation or organisation (p.4)
According to Joekes (1987) 'the overall rate of female income-earning activity has not changed significantly in developing countries in the post-war period' and in many cases has declined due to increased agricultural mechanisation, the commercialisation of crops and the absorption or disruption of many traditional enterprises by large modern industries. Male labour predominates in most modern forms of economic activity in developing countries.
While some women have been successful in running profitable businesses, e.g. in the fashion and service industries, and in certain kinds of trading (in particular in West Africa), they represent a tiny minority. More usually, women who engage in skilled work in the informal sector are to be found in low-paid jobs associated with 'female' skills, e.g. tailoring, weaving, embroidery and food production. In agriculture and the construction industry, women often do much of the unskilled labour. On the whole women earn less than men.
Many women carry out piece work at home for contractors at exploitative rates of pay (e.g. in the clothing industry). Their contribution to the economy remains largely invisible, as does that of women who work as helpers in a family unit. For example, in India women usually pre-process the yarn but the men are the ones who are counted as weavers, and in a pottery they are expected to fetch the water and clay from afar, but the actual potting and painting are done by the men, the potters. The women are not considered as workers (Jumani 1987).
The extent of women's participation in the informal sector is therefore difficult to gauge. It is especially so in countries like Bangladesh where women are supposed to be dependent on their husbands, and so their work is kept hidden because it is considered to be culturally shameful for a man not to be able to support his wife and family in full; it is also a means for women to retain control of their income and avoid family plunder of their goods (White 1989).
It is estimated that one-third of global households are female headed (UNDP 1991). In general, female heads of household have not only lower incomes but they also have more dependents and fewer adults contributing to household income and have less access to productive resources such as credit, technology and land (Goodale 1989). They are amongst the most vulnerable in society vulnerable to poverty, to economic austerity and to labour exploitation and marginalisation. Their children are correspondingly disadvantaged.
Female participation in the informal sector has grown considerably over the years, partly because of the growing incidence of female-headed households but also in response to increasing pressures placed on the family by economic recession and structural adjustment programmes, This is particularly true where the male members of the household are also employed in the informal sector. Increasingly, women and children are obliged to contribute to meeting the subsistence needs of the family (Goodale 1989).
For many women, the informal sector provides their only opportunity for work. They cannot usually compete for the somewhat better paid jobs in the formal sector on equal terms with men, for men are likely to have higher levels of skill and experience. Employers often show preference for male employees, except in some skill areas, e.g. in the electronics industry, where women's 'nimble fingers' are valued on the assembly line but low wages apply (Mosse 1993). Women who are employed in the formal sector are more likely to lose their jobs before men when the economy retracts. Therefore self-employment or piece work for a local entrepreneur may be all that is available for many women, especially if they have few skills. Access to the informal sector is relatively easy, even if not financially rewarding, and work can be combined with domestic responsibilities (Goodale 1989). In most cases, this means a much longer working day for women, who have to add this productive role to their existing reproductive and community roles (Moser 1989).
According to Goodale (1989), the assessment of training and employment needs for the informal sector by governments have all too often had a male bias. Because women are seen as marginal or as invisible in the employment market, their training needs have tended to be ignored. Women's skills training has not traditionally been associated with employment or market opportunities (production), but instead with the 'profession' of housewife and mother (reproduction) (Goodale 1989). Many vocational training programmes have focused on the traditional apprenticeship trades which usually recruit male trainees, e.g. carpentry, metalwork, masonry, motor mechanics etc. Where government and non-governmental bodies have sought to directly address the training needs of women (largely through non-formal education), they have tended to focus on female productive activities as income generation or 'pin money' and as supplementary to men's income rather than as wage or self-employment as a legitimate occupation for women (Goodale 1989). NGOs have also been guilty of perpetuating this narrow view of female work (Mosse 1993). (It is also true that there is a neglect of training for men in the informal sector whose work does not fall within the preferred 'productive' sectors of the economy. )
The unequal distribution of men and women in skilled jobs both in the formal and the informal sector and the gender-based differentiation of skills acquisition which results in men occupying the more lucrative high-status jobs both influences and is influenced by the educational and training opportunities made available to girls and boys at school (King and Hill 1993; Herz et al 1991; Fagerlind and Saha 1989). While girls are approaching educational parity with boys at the primary level in many countries, a girl's education still tends to be valued less than a boy's, so that where family income is low or where a child's labour is needed in the home or on the land, it is girls who will be kept from school before boys. At the same time girls are likely to receive less encouragement from teachers and parents to do well and less exposure to scientific and technical subjects at the primary level. Evidence from studies undertaken in developing countries suggests that the general academic achievement of girls (assessed by means of data on retention and repetition) is significantly lower than that for boys in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (but higher in Latin America) (King and Hill 1993).
At the subsequent levels of formal education in many countries girls become increasingly underrepresented, although the gap has narrowed significantly in many parts of the world (UNESCO 1991). For example, in Africa girls make up 44% of primary enrolments but only 34% of secondary and 21% of higher education enrolments (World Bank 1988). At the same time, fewer girls opt for the prestigious subjects of mathematics and science (which are especially important for careers in high-skill areas, Herz et al 1991), and there is evidence from international studies (albeit carried out mostly in industrialised countries) that girls' achievement rates are lower than boys in these subjects (Fagerlind and Saha 1989). There is however evidence that this gap is narrowing in some countries, and that girls can equal, and even out-perform boys, when given the same level of exposure and a supportive environment (Sutherland 1991; Times Educational Supplement 1993).
In every region of the world girls are to be found predominantly in the general academic streams of secondary school, with numbers enrolled on vocational and technical courses being very low compared to boys (King and Hill 1993). For example, in Ghana only 9.7% of total enrolments in government secondary vocational and technical institutions were female in 1992 (Boeh-Ocansey 1993). Such low enrolment may be because fewer girls come forward for such courses (fearful of harassment and hostility from boys) or because provision is less generous than for boys (Coombe 1988). Often the curriculum choices which are offered to girls (or which they are encouraged to make) reinforce their own perception of what are considered 'suitable' jobs for women. Where vocational options are available, girls are usually channelled into traditional 'feminine' subjects such as home economics, secretarial studies, tailoring, hairdressing and beauty care, and the less prestigious crafts such as weaving and embroidery. These are skill areas where jobs may not necessarily be available and, if available, will be poorly remunerated. Teachers tend to discourage girls (consciously or unconsciously) from taking subjects in non-traditional areas.
The significance of this relative absence of girls from vocational streams and classes needs, however, to be related to what has been commented upon in earlier chapters about the alleged inefficacy of such tracks. From the perspective that general basic education is a better preparation than being tracked into a low status vocational stream or school, it could be argued that it is to the advantage of girls that they are less likely to be pushed into differentiated streams than boys. More important, on the other hand, is the tracking within the general academic school which frequently fails to encourage girls to pursue science, mathematics and technology specialisations.
The lack of career guidance in many developing countries is especially serious for girls, who are likely to be ill-informed as to training opportunities available and themselves tend to show a negative attitude towards careers in technical and scientific fields. However, initiatives in careers guidance would need to be much more gender sensitive than they are in some industrialised countries if they were not simply to reinforce current gender-stereotyping.
Gender-based selection is encouraged in other subtle ways, through examples used by the teacher in the classroom, through models and illustrations presented in textbooks which perpetuate stereotypes of male and female roles in society, and through the limited amount of attention paid to girls by teachers (who at the secondary level are more likely to be male). A lack of trained female teachers in vocational subjects, who can also act as role models for girls, is also an impediment to the take up of non-traditional subjects by girls (King and Hill 1993; Goodale 1990).
In higher education, women are usually outnumbered by men in ratios often as great as 5 to 1. While in some countries, e.g. in Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia, women are achieving parity with (and even overtaking) men in higher education enrolments, they are still concentrated overwhelmingly in the less prestigious subject areas, such as education, the arts and social sciences, although some improvement in respect of subject choice has been noted (Sutherland 1991).
Likewise, only a small percentage of females will take up places in post-secondary technical and vocational institutions. A recent study undertaken by ILO with the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa found that in general female enrolments in polytechnics comprised approximately 25% or less of the total, and that female enrolments on technical courses constituted only a minute fraction of the total (Goodale 1990). In Tanzania the number of female students attending the country's three technical colleges fell from 10.9% of total enrolments in 1982 to 5.1% in 1988 (Mbilinyi and Mbughuni 1991). The under-representation and poor performance of girls in technical and science streams at secondary school, and society's perception of appropriate female roles, are major factors in such low enrolment rates.
On the whole, therefore, girls are likely to leave academic schools with less prestigious subject mixes than boys and therefore are unable to compete on equal terms for jobs in the formal sector of the economy.
Despite the concern expressed by many governments over the under-representation of girls in vocational education and active measures being taken in some instances to promote girls' participation in more diversified types of training, the results on the whole have been poor. For example, despite concerted efforts by Caribbean governments, girls are still concentrated in the traditional female subject areas, achieve poorer examination results in technical subjects than boys, and few opt to train as technical as opposed to academic teachers (Ellis 1990). Even in Jamaica, where girls attend secondary and post-secondary education in greater numbers than boys, and where there are more women with vocational or professional training, there is still a stereotyped selection of subjects (Ellis 1990).
Most governments insist that they do not have discriminatory policies regarding girls' enrolment on vocational programmes, but in practice social and cultural conventions deter girls from registering (Coombe 1988). To counteract this, some countries have engaged in positive discrimination to encourage girls to enrol on technical training programmes, for example through quota schemes and through the establishment of all-female training institutions (Coombe 1988; Iyer 1991), which have had some success in increasing the numbers of women in skilled occupations. However progress world-wide has been slow and the fact remains that girls continue to be deterred from joining training programmes in traditional 'male' areas of skills, and quotas often remain unfilled. This inevitably impacts on the level of skill at which women operate in both the informal and the formal sectors of the economy and relegates them to the least skilled and least rewarded work.
To sum up, there are many constraints operating on females which prevent them from participating in formal education and training, and thereafter in the employment market, on equal terms with males. Some of the most important of these constraints are:
- lack of places in suitable, secure schools within close proximity of the home- poverty (where choices have to be made as to which children to educate); the high direct and indirect (opportunity) costs of schooling
- the perceived poor return on investment in schooling for daughters
- the perception of appropriate female roles in society
- lack of suitable female role models in society
- lack of confidence among girls; girls' own low expectations of themselves
- gender stereotyping in textbooks
- lack of encouragement from teachers and parents to do well at school, to choose subjects in non-traditional areas and to look for a worthwhile career
- perceived lack of career opportunities for women and perceived reluctance of employers to take on women in male-dominated occupations
- lack of female teachers, especially in technical and vocational fields (negative attitudes among male teachers undermine girls' self-confidence and belittle their achievements)
- lack of government policies to actively promote female participation in training and employment.
As a result, current education and training provision appears to reinforce rather than weaken the social and economic constraints operating against the equal participation of women in the labour market. The result is that the majority of women enter a highly competitive and discriminatory employment market with few skills upon which to draw and are less likely to be able to set up viable businesses in the informal sector than men.
In the area of non-formal education, the same picture presents itself, with under-representation of girls in vocational training schemes of different kinds. For example, in Tanzania despite impressive increases and a quota system, in 1989 girls still only constituted 20.7% of trainees on the National Vocational Training Programme, and those were to be found overwhelmingly in the traditional 'feminine' skill areas (Mbilinyi and Mbughuni 1991). In Botswana the figure for female trainees in the Botswana Brigades cited in a Commonwealth Secretariat study of vocationally-oriented education in the Commonwealth was only 7% (Coombe 1988).
The same constraints listed above on girls' participation in formal education also apply in large measure to non-formal education. However there are some additional constraints facing governmental and non-governmental agencies trying to improve training opportunities for adult women outside the formal education sector. Among them are:
- low levels of literacy and numeracy among adult women- social constraints on adult women (male members of their family may not allow them to leave the home to take up employment or to attend training courses)
- lack of time, energy and mobility for women already overburdened by domestic duties to attend training programmes
- lack of childcare facilities both in training and employment locations
- lack of part-time and flexible working hours, job-sharing opportunities and transport for those with childcare responsibilities
- lack of appropriateness of the training offered (especially when courses are designed by men)
- lack of credit made available to women (by banks etc.); lack of collateral when requesting loans
- labour laws on women working in certain fields (e.g. mining and certain types of factory work) and at certain hours (e.g. night work, shift work), which, although intended to protect women, may restrict their employment opportunities
- the spread of technology which has sometimes encroached upon women's traditional skill areas and made competition with machine-made products impossible.
As a result, conventional training programmes of skill development have had limited impact on women, and women have not been persuaded to enrol in large numbers on courses that are outside those deemed 'appropriate' for women. As with formal vocational training, nonformal training opportunities for women have tended all too often to reinforce their subordinate position in the employment market.
Furthermore, Because women do not easily find employment in the formal sector of the economy, or are only found in certain low-paid jobs, they have little access to formal enterprise-based training, as described in an earlier chapter of this study. This would mean that an increased emphasis on the provision of training by the private sector, as suggested by the most recent World Bank policy on vocational training, would tend to exclude women (Mbilinyi and Mbughuni 1991).
Equally serious is the finding that a significant number of the most successful entrepreneurs in the informal sector have acquired major experience and confidence through relatively long exposure to the formal employment sector.
In the area of non-formal education, there are many projects and programmes which are targetted at, or include provision for, the training of women for employment. In particular income generating projects for women run by NGOs have mushroomed in developing countries. Most early examples of these, from the 1960's and 1970's, subscribed to the view (already mentioned) that female income was supplementary to the male's, and a woman's productive activities were secondary to her reproductive ones. Women were not perceived as producers in their own right (Goodale 1989; Moser 1989). These early projects concentrated on the production of traditional handicrafts, with training aimed at building up traditional 'feminine' skills in, for example, sewing, embroidery, weaving and food production. Income generating activities were often part of an agency's broader objectives on poverty alleviation, social welfare and community development. On the whole such projects have had a disappointing record in terms of income generation. For example, Goodale (1989) cites a 1984/5 analysis of 132 income generating projects in Africa working with 80 women's groups, where not a single project showed a profit in the year of study.
The reasons for such a disappointing record are numerous. Of interest to us here is the fact that training has all too often been offered with no knowledge of the potential market for a particular product or skill (Mosse 1993) and has failed to provide good quality products (Oxfam 1992). Moreover traditional female crafts are usually time-consuming and provide little income. In some cases women are actually selling at a loss and cannot even recover the cost of their raw materials (Oxfam 1992). Women are rarely involved in the higher status, more lucrative crafts such as jewellery, metal engraving and glass blowing, and if female activities do expand to a commercially viable level, men often take over (cited in Goodale 1989).
Buvinic (1986) is of the opinion that income generating activities on women's projects have all too often been served to keep women in low paid and low status economic activities and to exploit their volunteer or cheap labour, i.e. at the subsistence end of the self-employment scale. According to Moser (1989) the welfare approach to women's projects has been directed at meeting women's practical gender needs in terms of helping them to fulfil their reproductive and child-rearing roles, which reinforces their subordinate and dependent position in society. This approach has been popular because it is considered politically safe, whereas addressing their strategic gender needs (Molyneux 1985) requires working to overcome their subordination to men and thus upsetting the prevailing social and political order.
It is interesting that participants in a workshop run by Oxfam in Uganda in 1992 saw women as pawns in a flourishing NGO business, where additional (income generating) roles were being suggested to already overworked women which required the expenditure of considerable time, money and energy without the women having any clear notion of what they would gain (Oxfam 1992). Lack of clarity on objectives, priorities and strategies appear to be common weaknesses of projects which combine income generation with poverty alleviation and social welfare. Community development goals may at times be in direct conflict with income generation.
Howarth (1992) points out that agencies which are concerned primarily with poverty and social and community welfare and offer support for women's enterprise within such a framework, will be staffed by people with experience in community work rather than in business and enterprise development. Such projects are unlikely to generate sufficient profit for the women involved, because they have not been built on sound business principles. In a similar vein, Buvinic (1991) and Goodale (1989) attribute the general failure of income generating projects for women to the lack of technical and managerial capacity within the agencies. They are staffed by volunteers and generalists rather than by managers and technical specialists (Goodale 1989).
Another criticism of women's income generating projects is that they are frequently marginalised, they usually remain very small scale and may not be taken seriously by policy-makers and planners, or by the local business community. For this reason, some agencies prefer to set up projects which invite participation from both men and women (e.g. ACORD in Port Sudan). However in doing this care has to be taken that special components are included which will ensure that women's specific needs are met and that men do not take over.
Based on the Latin American experience, Buvinic (1991) identifies the most successful income generating projects for women (e.g. PRODEM in Ecuador) as being those which offer minimalist credit facilities which replicate features of informal sector lending. Successful projects often have male leaders with access to economic and political resources denied to women, and they are often open to men as well as women (but have specific design features and incentives aimed at women clients). In her opinion the worst projects are
multiple-objective projects that seek to form group-run women's enterprises in "female appropriate" tasks and include personal and social development objectives or family welfare ones [.....]. Their style is group-oriented, participatory and volunteer based. These projects are usually implemented by women-only organisations or church groups with a welfare orientation and/or a larger political agenda that conflicts with project performance. (p.18)
While the results of these multiple-objective projects which address mainly poor women are, in Buvinic's view, dismal in terms of enterprise development and income generation, she concedes that they continue to be the most popular approach for funding agencies.
There is no doubt that financial sustainability of income generating projects in general is problematic; however the benefits of the participative group approach to project management and the developmental gains of increased self-esteem, self-awareness and assertiveness which the broader multiple-objective approach can offer should not be ignored (Oxfam 1992). Indeed, as Howarth (1992) points out, business support agencies also have something to learn from community based development agencies in that the latter have developed working practices that encourage the empowerment of women and the construction of mutual support mechanisms, which are also important to the business success of women. This is in line with the marked shift away from the narrow Women in Development (WID) approach that characterised women's projects in the 1970's and early 1980's which viewed the solution to women's poverty and subordination as lying solely in their integration into economic activities, to the 'empowerment' approach where self-development and consciousness-raising among women are seen as crucial, for only if there is structural change and a redistribution of power in society will true equality for women in the employment market be achieved (Oxfam 1992, Moser 1989).
Finally informal sector training for children should not be ignored. Some agencies, in particular Save the Children Fund, recognise the importance of assisting street children to generate an income. For example in the Philippines and Honduras they have drop-in centres where street children can learn skills like typing, sewing, painting and carpentry. CAFOD has an income-generating project for orphans in Uganda.
Despite the poor track record of NGO projects in terms of income generation, according to Ellis (1990) evidence from the Caribbean indicates that NGOs have shown more initiative than government bodies in training women in non-traditional skills and opening up employment opportunities for them in the informal sector. It is likely that the same conclusion could be drawn from other regions.
A review of the literature on the education and training of women for informal sector employment yields the following findings:
1. Education and training alone will not suffice to increase the productivity and incomes of women in the informal sector (or indeed of the poor in general, whether in rural or urban informal sectors [World Bank 1991a: 58]). It must be pursued within a context of training for existing or potential market opportunities (Goodale 1989). One of the strengths of the renowned Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India, for example, has been that it only establishes training programmes once an in-depth analysis has been carried out to assess market opportunities in a particular sector or trade and to identify- specific problems faced by women in that area (Goodale 1989).
2. While it may be true that income generating projects have tended to have too many objectives (a feature of many such projects and not just those directed at women), it is perhaps more important that they have not assessed the requirements for meeting these objectives realistically and have been too diffuse and unfocused in their activities. They have often ignored the need to create a supportive environment around the project. For this an integrated approach which combines a number of strategies is necessary. This is another strength of SEWA. Likewise, the success of the GTZ-supported vocational training project for Afghan refugees in Pakistan (while not addressing women in particular) is attributed in large part to the integration of training, production and employment, and to the availability of credit (Boehm 1993).
3. Women need to be assisted into employment. The type of support services which might be offered alongside training are: women's banking or credit facilities, a social security scheme, legal advice, business advice, housing and childcare facilities, employment opportunities through production and marketing cooperatives, and trade union organisation to press for higher incomes and better working conditions. One of the remarkable features of SEWA's integrated approach is that by providing the above facilities to various groups it has offered some security to women in what are high-risk areas of economic activity. However cost considerations of providing such facilities and benefits cannot be ignored. Indeed one of the factors militating against the employment of women in the formal sector is that the cost of providing such facilities makes their labour less attractive to potential employers.
4. In some cases, training may not be as important as access to credit, whether in the form of credit provided by the sponsoring organisation or loans obtained through the regular banking system. Women participating in an Oxfam workshop in Uganda on income generating projects identified funds, resources, markets and credit as their most severe problems (Oxfam 1992). Banks need to be persuaded, for example through awareness campaigns or government incentives, to lend to women setting up small businesses or cooperatives. In practice women experience greater difficulties than men in securing bank loans and often have to obtain guarantees from their husbands before their request will be considered. This makes them easy prey for unscrupulous money-lenders. Yet there is evidence that women are proving to be more reliable at repaying loans than men (Kibare 1993). For example, on the Kenyan 'Chikola' scheme run by K-REP the repayment rate of loans from the rotating fund to women's groups over the past two years has been 100% and the scheme is to be expanded as it has been so successful (Oketch, personal communication 1993).
5. Governments have largely failed to initiate policies that will actively encourage women into self-employment and to enact legislation to remove legal barriers which often impede women from operating independently in business.
6. One-off training programmes are insufficient. They need to be backed up by retraining and upgrading provision, (Goodale 1989) and continuing access to vocational and/or career guidance. Women need to build up an awareness of the necessity to upgrade their skills on a continuous basis so as to enhance their employability.
7. Training in technical and vocational skills alone is insufficient. It must be combined with basic business, marketing and entrepreneurship skills (Goodale 1989). This is crucial for women who are looking for self-employment and for those situated at the lower (subsistence) end of the self-employment scale, where it can help them expand their economic base and make it more profitable. Even for those already running their own enterprises such training can be highly beneficial. For example, when the UNDP-funded Jua Kali Project in Kenya offered short training programmes to women small business entrepreneurs in the textile industry, it was found that they lacked management skills. It therefore started offering training in business management, accounts and bookkeeping, and taught them how to make good business plans so that they could more easily obtain bank loans (Oketch 1993). Another NGO in Kenya aimed to teach women to view their economic activities as a profit-generating business and to make decisions according to business principles rather than on the basis of household or kinship considerations (Walsh et al 1991). While some British agencies still offer only basic skills training, e.g. in handicrafts, increasingly it is being combined with business skills development (e.g. ACORD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, SCF). In Britain, the Durham Business School runs a short training course called 'Women Mean Business' for business advisers and trainers from overseas.
8. Training women in traditional 'female' skills such as tailoring, embroidery, knitting and food production may offer little opportunity for raising income levels or for future development, for markets are often saturated or non-existent, raw materials may not be available, and capital investment may be inadequate (Goodale 1989). McCormick (1991), for instance, points out for Kenya that 'women tend to concentrate in textiles, have newer businesses and succeed less than men'. Too many projects start from a desire to build on traditional skills, without assessing the market (as indicated above). The experience of the Youth Polytechnics in Kenya has been that a much larger percentage of female leavers have been unable to generate income from their training compared to males. One reason for this appears to be that female trainees have been limited to tailoring, dressmaking and business education, which either need a larger start-up capital or are not in high demand in rural areas. Many are now being encouraged to venture into the male-dominated trades (Oketch, verbal communication 1993). In the long term, only skill training which goes beyond existing traditional activities or builds upon them at higher technological levels can help women move into genuine entrepreneurship.
9. Women need help in breaking into new areas of economic activity, for they are likely to face hostility and resentment from men who see their livelihoods threatened. In addition, they face social disapproval for, as already mentioned, there are strongly entrenched social and cultural norms regarding women's involvement in the labour market. However there have been some successes. For example, SEWA has enabled women to break into what have been in the Indian context the traditional male activities of dairying, weaving and pottery, often in the face of strong male disapproval (D'Souza and Thomas 1993). An interesting example, also from India, of women entering a male dominated field is provided by the Tamil Nadu Joint Action Council for Women (TNJACW) which persuaded contractors in the construction industry to employ women masons. Women were usually employed only on a temporary and casual daily basis as unskilled workers (lifting earth loads, cutting soil, mixing cement etc.). Although there was considerable hostility from the contractors and male workers to women masons, financial incentives persuaded a number of contractors to take on a group of women who had been trained by TNJACW and some of the prejudices against women in these jobs were broken down (although the women masons still earned significantly less than the men for the same work) (Iyer 1991). The World Bank (1991a) cites other projects from Morocco, Jamaica and Chile, where training programmes for women in non-traditional skills have proved successful.
Likewise, fear of encountering overt discrimination, sexual abuse and harassment prevents girls from enrolling on training courses traditionally dominated by men (Ellis 1990; Mbilinyi and Mbughuni 1991). This may also be one reason why very few women take part in management training programmes,
10. There has often been a lack of information directly accessible to women on training, assistance and employment opportunities available for women. Greater publicity is needed, of a kind that will reach women (Goodale 1989).
11. While many of the problems relating to female employment may also apply to men, albeit to a lesser degree, improving women's employment opportunities in the informal sector has to take account of the fact that they are situated at the bottom end of the labour market and that there are social, cultural and economic factors which inhibit them from benefiting from training and employment opportunities on an equal basis with men. To counter discrimination and hostility when they attempt to enter non-traditional employment areas, they will need additional training in personal development (training in leadership, assertiveness, the management of stress and discrimination, and self-confidence building) (Goodale 1989).
Some funding agencies, particularly NGOs, have taken this on board and have included personal development training in their income generating projects for women (Oxfam 1990). The Commonwealth Secretariat has produced a manual for trainers entitled 'Entrepreneurial Skills for Young Women' ( 1992) which includes sessions on gender awareness and achievement motivation. The Durham Business School course stresses the importance of awareness building and self development alongside the acquisition of business skills. SEWA in India runs awareness building courses for female workers, which are aimed at raising awareness of women's rights as workers, fostering their understanding of women's position in the economy and exploring what steps can be taken to press for legislative action and protection on behalf of women. For group leaders and organisers there is training in leadership skills, skills in mobilising women, stimulating discussion and enabling action to be taken.
In addition, governments need to embark on media campaigns to change the attitudes of men towards women working in non-traditional areas. These should address teachers, male members of the family, career advisers, employers, planners, directors of educational institutions and women themselves. Some attempts have also been made to introduce gender training for government officials and others involved in working with women. In Nicaragua, the National Technological Institute (INATEC) has included a gender awareness component in its training programmes for men (van Dam 1992). In Namibia the government has commissioned a group of British consultants to provide gender training for ministry officials.
Many agencies also run gender training workshops for their own staff, both at their administrative headquarters and in their field offices, e.g. Oxfam, SCF, ACORD. In the UK the National Alliance of Women Organisations (NAWO) has recently produced a set of 'Guidelines for Good Practice in Gender and Development' for ODA. Other agencies are organising courses for NGO staff overseas, e.g. Womankind in India, World University Service (WUS) in El Salvador. In Kenya, KYTEC's community-based training and self-employment programme recently added training on gender issues to its technical skills upgrading and business management components for both men and women, since it had become obvious that gender-related factors were affecting women's performance in business (Kibare 1993).
12. Where training is being offered outside the formal educational system, it may be necessary to combine this with literacy classes. This is especially true of women in rural areas (who constitute the majority of the world's illiterates). Literacy and numeracy can be vital to all stages of informal sector employment, in production, marketing and obtaining credit. There is some consensus too that literacy gives women greater confidence. However, training for poor illiterate women should not pass on the message that they are ignorant in all respects. Women have 'invisible' abilities acquired through their entrepreneurial role in the home such as budgeting, planning and organising (Bennett 1993). Women continually innovate with the resources available to them, but their skills, knowledge and inventions often remain unrecognised due to their lack of visibility in the employment market (Appleton 1993).
Some literacy programmes have served directly to encourage women to set up their own income generating organisations or cooperatives. In other cases women who were already engaged in the informal sector wished to acquire minimal literacy and numeracy, for example to allow them to keep accounts or to take measurements, and then have been motivated to look beyond immediate income generation to press for better healthcare and greater parity with men (Bown 1993).
13. Training methods are particularly important when the target group are poor women with low levels of literacy. These women need training the most but have the least time and mobility and little or no experience of a formal learning environment. Training needs to be practical, related to their experience and of direct relevance to the problems and barriers that they perceive. Teachers may not be able to rely on the written word, but instead can use participatory methods which promote group or self-learning (Goodale 1989). Role play, demonstrations and field visits may be particularly effective aids to learning. Training needs to be communicated at a level relating to participants' existing understanding and in an appropriate language (Bennett 1993). It should be locally based, with childcare and transport provided where necessary. Women teachers may be necessary or desirable, especially as they can act as a role model for participants.
The pattern of training offered must take into account women's practical needs. This usually requires that training should be short and recurrent, for most women have little time and are not used to sitting in a classroom. Timing should also be flexible to fit in with women's domestic and childcare duties (Bennett 1993; Howarth 1992). KYTEC's experience is that training should not exceed three months: their training programme in skills upgrading, business management and gender issues was conducted in 4-5 hour sessions, three times a week, and this was judged appropriate for women (Kibare 1993). However in other circumstances this would be too great a load for women with heavy domestic and subsistence duties.
The media can also be used effectively to target illiterate women, and extension agents and mobile trainers, who are frequently used in health and agriculture, can also be used in small-enterprise development (Goodale 1989).
14. Some of the most successful small-scale training programmes have been ones where women have started income generating activities and then have trained others in the same skills. For example, on the SKVIS project in India a group of women who set up an income generating project received requests from others to train them in making saris, crafts, scarves and bedspreads (Christian Aid, undated); on the Lonsangano project in Zambia members of the original group, with the help of a UNDP volunteer, trained other women in the skills and techniques of tie-and-dye; Siti Hajar (Tailor Made in Malaysia) has taught others entrepreneurial skills. In addition these women offer powerful role models of successful entrepreneurs (Commonwealth Secretariat leaflets 1991-2).
15. Some agencies are of the opinion that training should be offered to groups rather than to individuals, e.g. to members of a cooperative, or to women's groups already set up for another purpose. Training for individuals is considered wasteful, because only a small percentage of those trained may become successful entrepreneurs, whereas with a group such as a cooperative all members will benefit from the training. This is the approach of SEWA. Although, as King (1993) points out, the NGO emphasis on the group rather than the individual makes the notion of training for self-employment problematic, there is evidence that a group approach offers important benefits to women. ACORD in Port Sudan started helping people on an individual basis but then came to realise that many of the constraints on women's performance in business were non-financial and could be addressed more easily in a group setting, although this strategy is likely to exclude the poorest and the most marginalised (ACORD 1992).
However this must be set alongside evidence from research both in UK and developing countries, cited by Bennett (1993), that as far as funding (credit) is concerned, individuals are a better target than groups. Oketch refutes this with evidence from the K-REP programme in Kenya which shows that lending to women's groups can be highly successful (as detailed above).
16. There is also some debate as to whether formal (more structured) or informal (less structured) training is more effective. There appears to be no assessment as to which brings the greatest benefit in terms of income-generation (ACORD, verbal communication 1993). Formal structured training in a classroom situation risks being too rigid and too abstract for the type of participants enrolled. It needs well-trained teachers who are capable of using flexible and imaginative approaches. It is expensive (from ACORD's experience training can cost up to four times the amount later mobilised by the group in the form of credit). On the other hand, less structured training, consisting of the supply of business advice and information on a one-to-one basis as and when requested by the client, can be more effective and cheaper. The adviser can offer advice on start-up and expansion of the business and can pay occasional visits to the client. This latter model is used extensively by ACORD in its Port Sudan Small Enterprises Programme.
