Contemporary “Market stall” is more than a space for women’s economic empowerment

__________________

OPINION

By Jovah Katushabe

For a long time now, the informal sector of small scale, road-side market businesses has been looked at as a space for the non-elites, dominantly feminine, and for some, it looked as though it was a political i.e distant from the public politics of the day. However,  with the economies world over facing unemployment and economic difficulties, the informal market economy, visualised through identical market stalls, has increasingly been given economic and political attention.

With the government’s appeal to the populace to be ‘job creators not job seekers’, people have turned to what was seemingly a preserve of the lowly in society. This drive, together with the systemic barriers that exist in formal working sectors, women have opted for market economies, which somewhat enable and sustain their livelihood but also help in their collective mobilisation for social and economic capital.

Historically, colonial economic architecture adopted a masculine model that was centered on male labour on agricultural plantations as it pushed women to the periphery and margins of colonial economies, into domesticity. This phenomenon leveraged formal work for men while women were left engrossed in nurturing and caring roles as they subsidised capitalist arrangements.

While these traces of coloniality are still existing, women have pushed boundaries to get involved in education, work in both formal and informal settings, seeking to contribute to national economic development targets but also generally to their individual household livelihoods. Through informal market spaces, women have had to transcend these binaries of public versus private by occupying markets that somewhat allow them flexibility to blend the public work in markets with domestic care roles.

Increasingly, markets have gained weight in today’s debates, ranging from how they are mushrooming to their potential in creating economic and non-economic opportunities for women (and men) therein. This interest is noticeable through the many Civil Society Organisations, Development Partners and the government’s investment in understanding this growing potential but also conscientizing and empowering women in these spaces.

You probably could have noticed the recent government’s interest in women market vendors and the several government grants (UWEP, PDM, YLP) that are mobilising women and youth in markets to form groups, choose market leadership and benefit from these grants. On several occasions, we have also seen how President Museveni has had an interest in the market stalls as a socioeconomic constituency, through which to galvanise political capital.

The question of market stalls becoming spaces for nurturing political agendas is neither new nor exclusive to Uganda. In the 2022 general election campaigns in Kenya, the media reported how the choice of Martha Karua as the presidential running-mate of Raila Odinga compelled the rival camp of Kenya Kwanza by presidential candidate William Ruto to turn to women market vendors popularly termed ‘mama Mbogas’ and all those who eke a living the hard way. Indeed, the ‘hustler’ narrative enjoyed a huge space in Kenya’s electoral discourse at the time.

Market stalls are enablers in a way that they fundamentally enable women to shift from the private sphere, compounded with unpaid care work, to the world of paid work.  A stall unearths women’s potential in leadership, it enhances agency and amplifies voice individually or collectively through informal saving groups that women market vendors are known to form.

Women’s ability to make choices is leveraged, and an income is earned to enable growth. Women’s resilience in running and operating a food stall, for example, is realised as they negotiate market life challenges, e.g., working with children. The debate on the growth of these markets, however, doesn’t ignore the ambiguities and complexities that exist in modern markets which women face in their day-to-day life.

These range from daily market dues, unhygienic spaces, no spaces to keep children as they work, and physical and emotional strains as a result of their work. Though market authorities (both government and private) are constantly appealed to for redress, these challenges continue lingering and sometimes frustrate women vendors’ operations. 

This whole range of activity on, around and because of ‘the stall’ triggers more than just economic dividends. Perhaps there is a need for us to pay more attention to what these informal markets are and their potential as spaces that nurture complex sets of dividends beyond the economic livelihoods often associated with these informal businesses.

The writer is a social and gender researcher
Katushabejovah1@gmail.com