From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

3 POVERTY AND WEALTH THE CHANGING WORLD OF WORKRecent estimates suggest that 60 per cent or more of women workersin the developing world are in informal employment of this nature,ranging from a low of 43 per cent in northern Africa to as high as 84per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. 107 It is precisely these jobs that areworst paid and least protected. Worldwide, women earn on averagetwo-thirds of a male wage. 108 Other groups who experience some ofthe worst wages and working conditions include the world’s estimated191 million migrant workers and 211 million working childrenbetween the ages of five and 14 years. 109Development thinkers and the ILO used to view the informaleconomy as an outdated relic of under-development destined to bereplaced by regular paid jobs. But informality has become an integralpart of modern globalised business practices, leading the ILO in 2002to revise its definition of the informal economy to include all jobslacking secure contracts, worker benefits, or social protection,thereby recognising that informal workers’ rights are a priority to beaddressed. 110The informal economy also poses a broader challenge to development,as it weakens the social contract between citizen and state.Finding a job there might be perfectly rational from an individual’sperspective, but governments have an interest in expanding the net ofthe formal economy to broaden the tax base, encourage firms toexpand (for example, by gaining access to bank credit), and extend thestate’s ability to regulate the quality of employment. Building thecombination of active citizens and effective states is much harder in aninformalised economy.BEND UNTIL YOU BREAKThe boundary between formal and informal economies has beenblurred by a combination of pressures that have transformed thenature of regular work. Traditional permanent, waged jobs accompaniedby benefits such as health insurance and retirement pensions are beingreplaced by a new age of insecurity in the workplace. The driversof change are both technological and political. Improvements incommunications and other technologies have allowed firms to drivedown costs by parcelling out their production chains across continents.153