Street Vending Research Paper

According to Lawrence Jeff Johnson, head of the ILO Global Employment Trends Unit, workers who lose their jobs "do not have access to social protection schemes. Instead of becoming unemployed, they often accept various forms of employment, working on their own or collaborating with family businesses" becoming informal workers.

South America has the highest rate of informal workers in the world. Informal labor represents a higher part of total female employment than it does for total male employment and its quality is lower for women than for men.

Informal market does not only represent underground market as many would think. In fact, in South America, most of the informal workers are street vendors. Street vending is one of the main activities performed by informal female workers. As the establishment costs are low and the working hours flexible, street vending is an appealing, and sometimes the only opportunity for women who desire to

Horizontal segmentation refers to women concentrating on specific business fields, such as education, domestic service, and health and social services, as they appear to not work indiscriminately in any sector. Vertical segmentation involves a different access to titles and positions according to gender. Women mainly work in low or medium level jobs, and have less access to executive, high responsibility positions. According to Heilman and Parks-Stamm (2007), the obstacles to their promotion aren’t about their abilities, but lie in unconscious bias and stereotypes, responsible for decision makers to have wrong perceptions and condition evaluations. Due to the same socio-cultural factors, women tend to credit their success to external factors and not to themselves and their own capacities and achievements, as men do. Therefore, women have more difficulties than men negotiating their salary, working conditions and