This is either household production which is sold on the market or a small, independent business enterprise which takes place in the home with domestic tools equipment and family labor. Work such as producing food for direct sale, dress-making, doing laundry for pay or producing handicrafts for sale would fall into this category. Women in developing countries engage in a variety of home- based domestic production to supplement family income and obtain the needed money for indispensable cash outlays. These include the production of food and crafts, for sale in local markets, or the provision of services (laundry, etc.) for wealthier local residents. This economic activity, although involving monetary transaction, remains "invisible" because it takes place on the "informal" market. A great number of women in developing countries and some in our own, are involved in this type of work which, for many, is the only source of income they can control. (I.L.O.. 1982).
Industrial piecework, also known in the literature as "homework", is on a fast rise. It predominates mainly in the textile, garment, electronic assembly and telecommunications (computer/satellite mediated) industries (Froebal et al., 1982: Martella, 1985). In this work, women produce in their homes - usually on a piece basis - products for sale on the world market, on sub-contracts for large multinational corporations, often mediated by local or national entrepreneurs or subsidiaries. This work is very exploitive: women run with all or most overhead costs (facilities, tools, light, travel to and from branch headquarters) and have virtually no production or marketing decision-making powers. This work is also "invisible": scattered in isolated rural or urban households and carried on, often illegally, in a clandestine manner to circumvent labour requirements and formal accounting. Where it is included in employment statistics, it appears under various non-comparable labels such as self employment and craft production, which makes comparison uncertain. Industrial home production involves a "captive labour force" of homebound women (in Canada, often Immigrant women), who have a great need for a little cash, but virtually no other employment alternatives. According to recent estimates, there are between two and three hundred thousand women involved in this type of work in Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Although this work affords poor women some badly needed cash, it does not offer any possibility of further improvement of women's position in the home or the community (Martella, 1985). Women in the Informal Sector or Small Enterprise
Women's unpaid supportive and direct work in family enterprises or on the family farm, remains generally invisible and unaccounted. Household surveys and time-budget studies consistently show strong involvement by women in these activities in many parts of the world, whereas formal statistics and census data systematically under-estimate women's economic contribution in these enterprises (Beneria, 1982). Although no exact figures exist documenting women's involvement in family farms and other small enterprises, individual studies show the importance of women's work to their success, particularly in the initial stages of the enterprise's development or in times of economic hardship, as in the case of North American farmers. With the rural to urban migration of rural males continuing, women are basically taking over the entire work and management responsibilities of their farms or rural enterprises in many parts of the developing world.
The characteristic of paid work performed by women on small family farms or enterprises is that it normally fetches lower than minimum pay (about half of a man's wages) and is seasonal or intermittent. Usually it involves such tasks as weeding, harvesting, threshing, post-harvest work (for example, the drying of grains for storage or transplanting seedlings) performed manually, with little modern technology. This is found in Asia (India, Bangladesh), Africa and in some parts of Latin America, and even in North American - for example, in tobacco farming in Ontario. Official statistics on its extent are unreliable or not available at this time. |
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