Labour Market Informalization, Gender and Social Protection: Reflections on Poor Urban Households in Bolivia and Ecuador

Resumen

This chapter is an attempt to understand the ways in which poor urban households in developing countries cope with the nature and depth of current labour market informalization, poverty and economic insecurity. It explores the dynamics of informality and its distributional aspects, and it demonstrates how job precariousness and vulnerability are interconnected as well as the importance of their gender dimensions. The paper is based on a study of poor urban house-holds in Bolivia and Ecuador, using sample surveys carried out in 2002.1 We focus mainly on three areas of inquiry: the evolving informal economy and its implications in the way households organize their lives; gender roles and gender relations; and the precariousness of work and lack of social protection.