Beer Brewing

Women who do this business are the most insecure in the whole informal business sector. The nature of the business requires them to bear with all sorts of people, most of them drunkards who use abusive language. They even beat them and refuse to pay for their drinks. Furthermore, the environment for this kind of business is hazardous to health, let alone the fact that some of the local brews are illicit and therefore sold in hidden places and during odd hours. Often this locally brewed stuff is sold at homes or near homes. The children may imitate some of the bad manners from both the customers and their mothers. If the place where the stuff is sold is far from home, the women are at a risk of being beaten, sexually harassed and even raped.

Furthermore, the beer selling business is associated with prostitution. Some people can not understand how one can sell beer without being a prostitute. The labelling theory here applies very much. Thus the women become the target of verbal abuse even if when they are not in the prostitution business. Beer brewing business is dehumanizing indeed. That is why women interviewed in Mlalakuwa, Manzese, Buguruni, Moshi and Mwanga, say that if they had other occupations open to them, they could not have opted for it.