Age
Most of the women who are engaged in the informal sector, are
relatively young. Out of the 300 women surveyed, 100 from Arusha, 100 from
Moshi, 80 from Dar es Salaam and 20 from Mwanga; almost three quarters 220 or
(73.3%), were of the age group between 18-35. The majority, 160 or (53.3%) were
in the 18-30 age group.
The involvement of relatively young women in the informal sector
is influenced by type and nature of the activities involved. While doing
research in Moshi and Mwanga, old women who were involved in the informal
business told me that there are young women who go as far as Taveta to buy items
for their businesses. The same happened in Arusha during the time of shortages
in 1980s where some of the women travelled to Namanga to buy some items from
neighbouring Kenya.
In Dar es Salaam, it was a mixed bag with regard to the age
structure. Although many of the young women did their business in market places,
selling food items such as maize floor, some of them were selling local beer.
Very few upper class(middle class) young women, in fact none in Dar e salaam,
did this kind of business. This leads us to the conclusion that those in the
middle and upper middle class engage in the informal business activities which
involves big capital. Most of the young women do not have enough capital, are
poor and have no accessibility to formal financial or lending institutions. It
can also be deduced from the field data and observation made that there is a
close relationship between age and capital formation among the women in the
informal sector. The older the woman, the higher the possibility of being able
to carry out the informal business profitably.
But it is not age alone that contributes to the accumulation of
capital. Marital status also matters. While the majority (31) among the young
women in the informal sector in Manzese and Buguruni in Dar es Salaam (N=48)
were either singles or divorcees, the majority of the women in the upper class
in Dar es Salaam were married and had support from their husbands in acquiring
capital.
