Gender and Informal Employment in Zimbabwe

1. Gender and Informal Employment in Zimbabwe Lindiwe Ngwenya, CSO Zimbabwe Malte Luebker, International Labour Office (ILO) Global Forum on Gender Statistics 26-28 January 2009 in Accra, Ghana

2. Outline of the presentation • Limits of traditional ‘headline’ labour market statistics • Employment in the informal sector and informal employment • Results from Zimbabwe’s 2004 Labour Force Survey • Changes to the 2009 Labour Force Survey • Gender sensitization, training and analysis of the 2009 LFS • Summary: Generating labour market statistics that are relevant for gender analysis

3. Limits of traditional ‘headline statistics’ • Unemployment rate alone can be misleading: • Suggests improvement in LM situation sine early 1990s, but ignores e.g. changes in type of jobs and returns to work. • Suggests gender equality in LM, but conceals e.g. differences in access to formal employment, type of economic activity, returns to work, non-SNA work and working time.

4. Employment in the informal sector and informal employment • Informal sector (enterprise-based concept): • Defined by ICLS (1993) as private unincorporated enterprises, optional limitation to (a) non-agricultural activities and (b) below size threshold (e.g. less than 10 employees). • Informal employment (job-based concept): • ICLS (2003) definition builds on informal sector concept and status in employment (ICSE-1993). x informal employment o formal employment

5. Informal employment in the 2004 LFS • Informal employment is dominant source of employment. • Concept is broader than informal sector. • Also captures informal employment in the formal sector and informal employment in households.

6. Differences in access to formal employment • Distribution of total employment suggests gender equality, but: • Almost three quarters of formal [sector] jobs are held by men. • Majority of informal [sector] jobs are held by women. • Concept is useful to reveal gender differences.

7. Differences in branch of economic activity and returns to work • 2004 LFS shows informal employment is concentrated in agriculture (male: 75.7%, female: 79.5 %). • Non-agricultural activities are often (incorrectly) coded as “Personal services n.e.c.” (ISIC Rev. 2 code 9599). • Small-scale pilot survey in Glen View, Harare, shows: • Women are concentrated activities with low barriers to entry and low returns (low-end street vending, apparel, etc). • Men are more likely to be in higher-end vending (electrical goods, roast mealies, marihuana, etc), taxi operators, furniture production and repair of motor vehicles & household goods. • Weekly cash earnings of men (mean: US$33, median: US$9) are higher than of women (mean: US$11, median: US$4.60). • Gender differences contribute to high inequality (Gini: 0.72).

8. Gender differences in working time • Do men work more hours than women – or less? • Answer depends on concept of work: • ‘More’, if only employment is considered (i.e. SNA work) . • ‘Less’, if unpaid domestic work is included (i.e. non-SNA work).

9. Informal employment in Zimbabwe’s 2009 LFS • In 2004 LFS categories ‘permanent employees’ vs. ‘casual/temporary employees’ were used as proxy to distinguish between formal and informal employees. • New section in 2009 LFS on social security to capture job-based concept of informality (ICLS 2003). • Informal employees are those employees who lack at least one of the following: • Employer contributions to pension fund, or • paid annual leave, or • paid sick leave. • Lack of written contract as additional indicator.

10. Inclusion of secondary jobs in 2009 LFS • Stakeholder workshop in July 2008 recommended inclusion of a new section on secondary jobs: • Most formal jobs fail to sustain households, so some formal employees also hold an informal job to supplement income. • Helps to properly measure the extent of informal employment. • Data are potentially relevant from a gender perspective.

11. Gender sensitization, training and analysis • Gender sensitization in conjunction with training for 2009 LFS field staff to ensure that data collection is gender sensitive. • To be the duty of the Internal Gender Committee that is chaired by the department’s gender focal person, whose mandate is to spearhead gender mainstreaming at the CSO. • Gender and child analysis training for CSO Statisticians & gender focal points in line ministries and parastatals. • Hope for in-depth analysis of the 2009 LFS to shed light on gender and informality in Zimbabwe. • Plans underway to set up a Gender Statistics Committee to be chaired by national gender machinery.

12. Conclusions: Generating labour market statistics that are relevant for gender analysis • Sex disaggregation of traditional labour market statistics can be insufficient for gender analysis: • E.g. unemployment rate suggests gender equality where deep inequality between men and women exists. • Informal employment is one useful way to capture difference in type of jobs held by men and women. • Zimbabwe’s example shows that Labour Force Surveys are a good tool to collect gender relevant statistics. • In line with ICLS (2003) ‘Checklist of good practices for mainstreaming gender in labour statistics’: • Collect labour statistics on all topics relevant to gender, e.g. informal employment, working time, non-SNA work.