Sex inequalities in urban employment in the Third World

The development process involves a restructuring of the labor force from traditional and subsistence-type rural employment to modern organized urban employment. For women this restructuring is often considered to increase their disadvantage; the modern sector is said to take over economic activities which were traditionally the means by which self-employed women earned their income--such as food processing retail trade and making cloth and clothes--while employers in the modern sector are said to favor men as employees. This volume investigates male-female inequalities in modern sector non-agricultural employment in developing countries. The case of the catering business in Ile-Ife illustrates the ways in which the modernization of an industry can exclude women even when the occupations involved are traditionally female. A key factor in the restricted employment of women is the existence of a well-defined hierarchy in the modern catering establishment. In a society like Nigeria where it is felt that women are inappropriate for supervisory jobs the top levels of the hierarchy tend to be male even in the kitchen. This also tends to exclude women from the lower levels since male bosses can be accused of sexually victimizing female but not male subordinates. Another important disadvantage of women is their greater difficulty of access to the capital required for ownership of their own business. Certain changes in the modernization process tend to discourage women as potential employees. The fixed location and fixed hours of work makes work more difficult to combine with womens domestic responsibilities. In a society like that in Ife where women are traditionally economically active and are expected to be active their gradual exclusion from economic activity by male dominated modernization is a real danger to their place within society.