Question

Even though women may often constitute the majority of the rural-urban migrants in a country, they usually still remain employed in the informal sector. Why? What are the consequences of this?

Answer 1

One of the main reasons why women make up the majority of rural-urban migrants in the country and remain employed in the informal sector is because of gender inequality in the workplace. A lot of men have occupied the roles in the former sector and are unwilling to give the leadership position to the women. This is a worrying trend that should be addressed and amended on time so that women have equal opportunity in the workplace without being discriminated against.

The occupancy of men in the former sectors end up pushing the women into the informal sector. Consequently, women have to accept much lower wages four similar or even more amount of effort. This has a very serious problem. Even though women are contributing significantly to the output of the economy through tremendous effort, their effort is not reflected appropriately in the GDP figures due to lower value jobs. Therefore, the GDP figures are largely understated.

Furthermore, the informal sector will often mean that job is unstable and the Social Security benefits are almost nonexistent. The problem with this is that the welfare of the women who makes up a large portion of the Labor force will be compromised. This must be eradicated to appropriate women empowerment programs for employment and the training programs for women as well