The Gender Dimension Of Informal Employment In The Maghreb Countries

Résumé: Abstract The paper builds on the wide array of data collected by official statistical organisations in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia on informal employment and informal microenterprises. Though incomplete and unharmonized, data on employment in the various components of the informal economy (in the informal sector, in the formal sector, in the households) are analysed and compared, especially in a gender perspective. Data on earnings are only available for microenterprises in Tunisia. This exercise results in a heterogeneity of country profiles in contrast with other regions of the developing world: the informal economy is not the main entry door of women on the labour markets and the characteristics of jobs by which women engage in the informal economy differ from one country to the other. Efforts of harmonization should be pursued in order to better capture and understand the challenges raised by the difficulties of measuring the actual contribution of women to employment, informal employment and disentangle economic activity as measured by GDP and care work as measured by time-use surveys.

Publié dans la revue: Revue d'études sur les institutions et le développement