r afford to neglect women's economic contribution, but must support them with training, appropriate technology and credit for inputs on a level equal with men.
Among women in Ghana, trade is the next most common form of economic activity after agriculture. One of the primary reasons for the predominance of women in trade in West Africa is the flexibility of the market system which allows women to bring their children with them to work. Time flexibility and informal child-care assistance from other market women enable them to combine their productive and reproductive roles effectively. Children also play valuable roles as intermediaries and errand-runners for their mothers who are confined to market stalls.
Women's dual roles can limit the expansion of their businesses, however, and in many places a division of labour in trade has developed whereby women more commonly sell subsistence goods in the open market or from small retail shops, whereas men tend to deal with more valuable consumer goods and own larger shops.
Women in both urban and rural areas figure far more prominently in the informal sector than in formal wage employment. Often, women take on informal tasks such as house-cleaning on top of their own household responsibilities and formal jobs in order to supplement meagre wage earnings or to secure a modest income independent from their husband's. The informal economy covers a very wide range of activities from small-scale manufacturing, to self-employed tradespeople to people engaged in personal services and family enterprises. What enables this collection of activities to be called a sector is the fact that all of it takes place beyond the boundaries of social and labour legislation. In many countries, the size of the informal sector is estimated to be considerably larger than the formal sector, however statistics on informal economic activity are not well kept and are often speculative. In Brazil, nearly half of all women workers are self-employed, compared to roughly one fifth of male workers. In Botswana, 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 discri