Women"s ventures : assistance to the informal sector in Latin America

While the number of male workers doubled between 1950 and 1980, female workers more than tripled. By 2000, an additional 22 million women will join the labor force. Most of these female entrepreneurs are found in the informal economy, particularly in small-scale service and trading activities, where wages and working conditions are generally worse than those in regularized wage employment. This collection of 14 readings addresses the primary concerns of Latin American women in the informal sector. It has a practical orientation, focusing on existing projects, programs, and policies to determine how interventions can be made more responsive to the needs of women. The readings are organized around four broad subject areas: (1) an overview of the informal sector, specifically the microenterprise segment of that sector, and policies and programs designed to assist it; (2) training and technical assistance activities targeted to the sector; (3) case studies of credit programs for small and microenterprises (the Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador); and (4) the gender-disaggregated evaluation of assistance programs.