Women in informal sector suffer huge losses – study
EARNINGS for self-employed women in the informal sector decreased by nearly 70% between February and April this year.
This is according to a study, undertaken by Rhodes University’s Professor Michael Rogan in collaboration with UCT’s Caroline Skinner of the African Centre for Cities, on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the informal economy.
“Women should be better supported as they were the most vulnerable and the most severely affected group,” said Rogan who, alongside Nelson Mandela University’s Professor Nomalanga Mkhize, discussed this and other findings of the study in a webinar hosted by Professor Cyril Mbatha of Rhodes University’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.
There were 90 participants from institutions of higher learning, government departments, private organisations and the media.
“Around March and April, it was clear that we did not have much data on the impact Covid-19 would have on households and the labour market in South Africa. A project to collect non-medical data on the impact of the pandemic was initiated by researchers from Stellenbosch University (https:// cramsurvey.org/). I submitted a proposal for an analysis and policy paper on the impacts of the pandemic on the informal economy,” Rogan said.
The research for the study, “The Covid-19 crisis and the impact on South Africa’s Informal Economy”, used data from the SA National Income Dynamics Study Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (Nids-Cram), a broadly representative national survey.
For the study, a team conducted phone interviews with more than 7 000 individuals between May and June 2020. The questionnaire covered multiple themes, but since it was designed not to take more than 20 minutes of the respondents’ time, only a few employment-related questions were possible.
Despite this, the Nids-Cram data allowed for the analysis of three groups of informal workers, namely: the self-employed (in the informal sector), informal employees (both inside and outside of the informal sector), and casual workers. It also allowed for important analysis, by gender, of those who did not lose their livelihoods entirely between February and April, and for comparisons between formal and informal employment.
However, Rogan said the data did not allow for the identification of total job losses in the informal economy between February and April, nor the impacts by industry or place of work (eg households). Other key findings of the study include:
Just under a third (31%) of informal workers who did not lose their livelihoods were completely "locked out" of employment in April – compared to 26% of those in the formal employment sector.
About 37% of the informally self-employed reported zero earnings in April.
On average, for those who were informally employed in both February and April, the average hours worked per week decreased by 32%.
For the typical informal worker that was employed in both February and April, the hours worked per week decreased by as much as 50%.
Women in the informal economy saw a decrease of 49% in the typical hours worked in April, while men in informal employment saw a 25% decrease in typical hours.
Mkhize said: “The picture painted by the research is very scary and it is not so much because of Covid-19 but it is because of the very bad socio-economic situation we live in. We need to learn from this because in the Eastern Cape we have young black men who are not given a chance to be part of a formal process to become responsible citizens of the country.
“The government should look at making food parcels and the R350 Covid-19 relief aid permanent.”
Rogan recommended that women should be supported as follows:
The child support grant allocation should be increased for each child.
There must be an increase in the amounts of grants in line with international norms.
The government must re-frame the special Covid-19 grant. Two-thirds of the 2.7 million recipients (by the end of June) were men.
The government must reform the Unemployed Insurance Fund as very few domestic workers have received claims, and in the longer term, the government needs to rethink the role of the informal economy.
Rogan said this was the first round of research and four more rounds of surveys were planned for 2020, which would aim to determine which workers and households had recovered from the initial economic shock of the pandemic and lockdown. |