Women’s Informal Entrepreneurship - A Force in Development : The Case of Babati, Tanzania

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims at investigating women’s force in development through engagement in informal, small-scale entrepreneurship. During fieldwork in Babati, Tanzania, network analyses and semi-structured interviews have been conducted, capturing responsibilities, challenges and opportunities of informal women entrepreneurs. The theoretical framework centres socio-economic analyses, through development and feminist economics. Two theories, about development through capital accumulation and cumulative processes, are compared and supplemented with a gender and empowerment perspective. The results are presented through narratives, complemented with a general picture. It is concluded that informal female entrepreneurs are important in development of Babati. They face challenges due to economic, social and gender-related conditions such as lack of capital, high interest rates, poverty, lack of education, malfunctioning government, discouraging men, and increased workload from domestic responsibilities. Their complex, informal networks, based on cooperation and solidarity, are seen as a driver in development. Top-down policies that fight gender norms, empower women, and identify informal workers can improve their situation, but for these to trickle down, a bottom-up approach is required. This thesis pushes for recognising that people living in poverty contribute to economic growth and development, and that empowerment of informal women entrepreneurs is essential for a profound, pro-poor development that trickles up.