swana, a national labour force survey in 1984/85 estimated that women comprised 70 per cent of informal sector workers. Statistics from Ghana are sparse, but a residual estimate of employment in the informal sector based on 1970 census data suggested that women accounted for 61 per cent of this type of activity, with 60 per cent of these women being engaged in retail trade.33 There is every reason to believe that women's informal sector involvement has continued to be high since then, as there has been limited expansion of their formal employment opportunities. On the other hand there is quite an increase in roadside trading by young able-bodied men which may be changing the male-female balance within the sector.
Women's tasks in the informal economy are often extensions of their reproductive roles outside the home: cleaning, washing, food preparation, child-care or sexual services. Many of these activities can be undertaken from the home, which make them particularly attractive to women struggling to balance reproductive tasks with the need for a regular income. While the flexibility of informal sector employment in this respect is a distinct advantage for women, there are many drawbacks to this kind of work: tasks can be extremely physically demanding and tiring, there is no job or income security or protection in the event of sickness, women who are not self-employed are often exploited, and there is little opportunity for advancement or training. Women's involvement in the informal economy is often governed more by necessity that by choice: many women would prefer the security of formal employment but lack the education and skills, are discriminated against in the job market, or are constrained by the lack of socialized child-care support.
The gender gap in education and the allocation of reproductive tasks to women under the gender division of labour provide formidable constraints to women's participation in formal and professional employment. Globally, women have struggled against additional kinds of discrimination in employment, including their concentration into low levels and low status positions, unequal pay for the same work as male counterparts, and sexual harassment at the workplace. A range of values, both economic and non-economic, appear to govern discrimination against women in employment. In many societies, in both the industrialized and developing worlds, women's income is viewed as secondary and supplementary to that of the main male breadwinner and household head, hence lower wages for women arc seen to be justified. Cost considerations stemming from labour legislation about women, such as the provision of maternity leave, are also used as justification for lower pay.
Many employers distrust women's commitment to continuing employment and fear intermittent absence by women employees who must meet the needs of their families. And there is little doubt that some employers discriminate against women in pay and working conditions largely because they feel they can get away with it: women workers are perceived as passive, are often unorganized and lack political visibility and clout.
In her book The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective, the former chairperson of the National Council on Women and Development in Ghana, Florence Abena Dolphyne, notes that professional women - lawyers, doctors, engineers, bankers, administrators and the like - command a great deal of respect in African societies. Discussing women's status in formal employment, she notes:
"Professional women in Africa do not face the same level of discrimination in employment that women in similar positions have had to put up with in some Western countries... they earn the same salaries and enjoy the same conditions of service as their male counterparts... The discrimination that the professional African woman has to put up with is more within the home environment, where traditional attitudes about a woman's place in the home still persist."
In Ghana, women workers have been fortunate to encounter proportionately little discrimination