The Blind Women and the Elephant: Causes of Informal Sectors, Case of Women Street Vendors in Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia

Though women comprise a significant portion of urban informal employment in Ethiopia, particularly in street vending, there has been a lack of comprehensive studies examining the underlying causes of informal sector employment. Accordingly, this study aimed at identifying factors influencing the causes of women’s engagement in street-vending activities in Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia. In doing so, primary data from a sample of 384 women street vendors were collected through a structured questionnaire. The findings from the multivariate probit regression indicate that in their younger years, women’s participation in street-vending activities tends to increase as a response to the lack of job opportunities and tight bureaucratic conditions in the formal sector. However, as women age rise like a wallflower, their engagement in these activities tends to decline. The study also discovered that an increase in household size leads to greater voluntary participation of women in street-vending employment. Yet, in the absence of job opportunities and strict bureaucratic conditions to open a formal business, a larger family size results in decreased women’s involvement in similar tasks. Furthermore, compared to Christians, Muslim women exhibit lower voluntary engagement in street-vending activities. But they (Muslim women) have higher participation in similar tasks as retaliation to large-paper works required in formalizing a business. Hence, before taking any strategic measures, policymakers in the city should understand the distinct causal approaches of the informal economy in general and the heterogeneous effects of different explanatory variables on the causes of women’s street vending activities in particular. Graphical Abstract